The 96" LED tubes are available, though still a bit pricey. You might consider changing the fixtures out with 48" and go with those tubes, who's price has come down a lot in the past couple of years.

8 Foot LEDs

http://lumald.com/2013/05/29/leds-not-always-the-answer/

What about 8' replacements similar to the 4' ones lumald.com mentions?

Perhaps you missed the point of the article? LEDs are not that much more efficient than Fluorescent tubes. They will not pay for themselves in energy savings. You will loose ALL the benefits of fluorescent tubes. The fluorescents spread light all over fairly evenly, while LEDs are inherently unidirectional. They will act like baffled recessed down lights rather than whole room workshop lights.

The LEDs are great for a closet where you turn the light on for 1 minute, and turn it off again because fluorescents use a lot of energy turning on which makes them not much more efficient than a halogen until you leave them on for at least 30 minutes at a time. Assuming that you go into the workshop to work...for a period of time, the fluorescents are much better light, and almost as efficient as LEDs. If energy conservation is your goal, add another light (A19 type LED) and switch in the shop for when you don't need "work light", or just going there for a few minutes. Even with just the fluorescents, separating the fixtures with more than one switch is a better means of energy conservation. Just turn on only the lights you need.

I had luminaries holding nearly 40 8' lamps in the house and garage. I started converting them to 4' lamps with new socket brackets, ballast covers, ballasts and lamps. (sometimes I just took a saw to the existing ballast covers to save coin. If you can find a shop nearby to supply you with the bits you need to convert, you can do it on the cheap. I bought ballasts on ebay. if you buy 10 or a dozen a shot, they are not expensive.

The trouble with tubes longer than 4' is that you have to use instant-start ballasts. That is fine if you don't switch them often. If you do a lot of on-off, it really cooks the lamps fast. If they are cycled frequently, you want program-start ballasts and 4' lamps. When lamps are cycled frequently you stop thinking of their life in hours in favor of starts. Program start ballasts make for a fine lamp life and only use a little more power than instant-start. I think that no one would install instant-start ballasts anymore unless the lamps are on continuously.

I used mostly GE GE432-MVPS-L ballasts because I was, generally, over-lamped. I have a few GE232-MVPS-N as well. You could go with another quality brand with similar characteristics. Pay attention to the ballast factor to adjust light levels if you want (L=low, N=normal and H=high lamp output). Otherwise, be sure to get the normal ballast factor products. I installed pull chain switches in some 4-lamp luminaires and installed 2-lamp ballasts. I bought a case of 5000K GE SPX lamps on Ebay. (I see that GE now has something in addition to SP and SPX, SPP. I don't know how the CRI of the SPP compares to the superior SPX or inferior SP.)

My process was slowed because I picked up a case of primo 8' lamps (CRI 90) for less than $2/lamp. I'll convert if the ballast fails, but otherwise wait until I run out of lamps. By then, maybe a better solution tempt me.

It seems like I was spending a lot of time cutting stripping wires so I got a neat little CUT-N-STRIP TOOL that really works great and is not pricy at all.

I'm with Fred, I think the ROI with energy savings is a long way out. I don't know about the 8' LED bulbs but at least the 4' bulbs available at the home center put out a lot less light than than fluorescents (roughly 2,000 lumens vs. 2,900).

The situation as described above for LED bar replacements is pretty much as described with I started with my retrofits. That was probably as long ago as the article in the link. LEDs are moving so quickly that the information is pretty dated. Despite the fact that I determined that LEDs were not going to be cost-effective for my situation then, I would encourage anyone to make judgement based on contemporary information. The Lighting Research Center at RPI is a good resource for many lighting decisions.

I looked again and the local home center has a Sylvania drop-in 4' LED replacement lamp that uses 12 watts and puts out 1600 lumens. That's a 45% decrease in light and a 63% decrease in energy usage. To get the same amount of light would require 1.8 LED lamps for every fluorescent lamp requiring 21.75 watts of electricity. That's about a 36% energy savings overall. Of course, that doesn't include the cost of the new LED lamp ($14.98) vs. $2.33 for a fluorescent tube.

If I have the math right, the break even using a national average of 12.8¢ per kWh is about 8,200 hours for just replacing the lamps 1 to 1. Just keeping the light levels the same ups it to 8,900 hours. Throwing a cheap fixture (which would be necessary to maintain light levels) into the mix bumps it up to 11,200 hours.

But somebody might want to check the math, it's still early. <lol>

Fred, I did read the article and wanted to know if there were 8' fluorescent tubes as efficient as the T8s described in the article. In fact, the next day, I noticed that the tubes in one of my 4' fixtures were dead so I decided that this was an opportunity to get T8s. I did and they are great. I didn't, however, note if the article referred to a particular type of T8s and I just got the standard ones at Lowes, where I was already shopping.

Apparently you are saying that all your tubes are T12? I guess I have not installed an 8' tube in so long, that it didn't dawn on me. Those are something I have not installed in 25+ years.

Unless you piece meal off of eBay like ionized, it is almost as cheap to buy new fixtures as to replace ballasts and add sockets. If you were paying an electrician to install them, I think it would definitely be cheaper to replace the whole fixture.

Fred, Yes, I think my 8' tubes are T12. It's just that I have the fixtures hard-wired in, in some cases in a linear pair, so it would be a pain to replace the fixtures themselves.

The first questions are how many lamps do you have and how do you use them. In addition, how important are aesthetics? If you turn the lights on and leave them on for a long period, just buy some 8' T8 lamps and ballasts and put them in as the existing ones fail.(if you don't mind miss-matched lamps). If you switch some of the luminaires frequently, convert those to 4' programmed-start. Go with programmed-start T8 where you already have 4' lamps. You will have to change sockets if they are now instant-start ballasts. 3 years ago, I had a hard time finding the right sockets at a decent price until I found a very friendly lighting store nearby.

Closets at tough. I doubt the lights are on enough to recover any real savings from an economical lighting source so LED is not an economic choice. I'd probably just go with Program-start ballasts and high CRI T8s. I bought 5000k GE SPX lamps on eBay. (I am not sure that LED are really there yet with color rendering and temperature anyway.

What do you mean by program-start? Regarding the 8' ones, I haven't had any ballasts fail, so I just replace the tubes as needed. I was just wondering if there are any high efficiency 8' tubes similar to the new T8s I just bought. All of these lights (except for the closet ones) are in my basement. This includes a laundry, workshop, and storage for art supplies. They may be on all day some days, or just a few minutes if all I'm doing is loading the laundry.

Google is your friend with wiring and other diagrams to help explain. In the olden days, there were instant start on the one hand and rapid start and preheat on the other. Remember those little "cans" or starters on fluorescent luminaries or the button that you hold for a moment? Those are gone now along with magnetic ballasts that operate at 60 Hz. (Bzzzzzzzz).

Instant start ballasts immediately strike an arc the length of the lamp and that vaporizes a lot of the electrodes in the ends. The other obsolete types and program start preheat the electrodes to make striking easier and more gentle on the electrodes.. This extended lamp life many-fold with frequent switching. These are even used with occupancy sensors. I believe that instant start is rarely used in new installations anymore. 8' lamps are getting rare too. Economies of scale my be pushing them out in favor of 4' lamps, but they can still be had.

Modern electronic ballasts operate at 20,000 Hz, IIRC, so you can't hear them. Instant start ballasts put current in only one path, the full length of the lamp. The other types preheat the electrodes by running current through the filaments at each end (pin to close-by pin) so striking the arc is easier and more gentle. There is a current path switch involved. There used to be a bigger penalty in power use with rapid start, but has been made largely insignificant with the electronic, program start ballasts. The sockets are different for instant and program. Only instant start is available for 8' lamps. You don't need to change sockets if changing from 8' T12 to 8' T8, Your 4' are instant start, you need new sockets to go to program start.. If they are 4' rapid start, you are good to go with existing sockets.

Depending on your use and how easy it is to get to the cabling, (finished basement or not). I might put the laundry area on a separate switch and install program start there and keep the 8' in the rest of the basement. Chaniging from instant start T12 to instant stat T8 is a lot easier than from 8' to 4'.

The ballasts in my 8' T12s might be more than 50 years old. I bought some retrofit kits to convert my 8' luminaires to doubled 4', but I did not like them very much. Fortunately, there is a good lighting store near me that does not mind selling me sockets and brackets in low numbers rather than in the 100s of units that they sell to contractors making conversions.

Thank you, ionized. I realize that fluorescent lighting has come a long way! I'll upgrade as the old ones fail.

There are some GE ballasts that are listed in this brochure for 8' lamps. Ballast factor is proportional to light output and inversely proportional to lamp life. (1 means "normal" light output.) I'd consider buying enough to do the job all at the same time on ebay after shopping for an excellent price. Note that "High Output" is a different type of socket so stay away.

T8 ballasts

Note that compared to T12, the starting lumens may be lower for T8, but light output decays less over the life of the lamp so mean lumens is equal or higher for T8.

Here is a brochure for programmed start ballasts with some data comparing instant start with programmed start wrt lamp life.

Programed start vs. instant start

The 8' lamp systems are on their way out so there are fewer options than for 4' lamps and ballasts. High efficiency may mean different things. T8s produce more lumens/watt than T12. That is higher efficiency, but it may also mean that lower lumen output lamps installed with the right ballasts or lower output ballasts installed with the right tubes use less power, but yield sufficient light output because the area was "overlapped" to begin with.

Good luck!