Replace a 40W fluorescent tube with an 18W LED Panel Light tube. If compared the service life and selling prices between them we could find that: the average selling price of 18W LED tubes is 165-200 yuan, average ex-factory price is 135 yuan, the production cost is around 120 yuan. LED T8 tube, 18W, 1.2m, using Epistar 3528 LED chips, luminous flux of single chip is around 6lm, embedded isolated drivers, total luminous flux is approximately 1400-1600lm. If every LED T8 tube works 10 hours one day, 365 days one year, after two years, one LED T8 Tube can save energy of: (40W-18W) x 10 (hours) x 365 (days) x 2 (years)/1000W (one kilowatt hour = 1000W) = 160.6 kilowatt hour. Save money of 160.6 kilowatt hour x 0.9 yuan/ kilowatt hour = 144.54 yuan. The average service life of fluorescent tubes is one year. Two years need two fluorescent tubes. Then price difference between them should be: 165 – 10 x 2 = 145 yuan. Therefore, if LED tubes can be used for more than two years (7300 hours, it is easy for most LED tubs to work this long). According to the above calculation, LED tubes need at least two years or more to recover the cost of production and realize the final goal of energy-saving, which is also a piece of good news for the LED tube market.
The average selling price of LED tube is around 150-200 yuan/each. There is still falling space. At present, the average ex-factory price of LED tubes is about 6-20 yuan/W. Prices vary among different manufacturers. A cost structure of on 18W T8 LED tube: the light source accounts for 53%, the driver accounts for 14%. Obviously, light sources occupy nearly 50% of the total production cost. Light source part is the core technology of LED lights. Different technologies, different materials cause different tubes from different LED manufacturers cost different. The difference of selling prices may as higher as 200 yuan for some products with the same specification in the LED tube market.
Since November of 2009, with the increasingly intense competitions in the LED tube market, selling prices of LED tube lights continuously dropped. In the mean time, the demand for light sources, power supplies, lamp shells is also increased stably, making the production cost hard to be cut down.