A friend found this in a thrift store & gave it to me. The ballast still worked, but had very loose laminations, so I removed it and remote-ballasted it with a brand new 175w metal halide CWA ballast. Most of the time it runs a vintage Sylvania High-Output White (/W) BT-28 cleartop mercury lamp.
They are probe-start MH ballasts and I prefer them as they are quiet and reliable to use my vintage mercury lamps on. CWA ballasts also have longer run up time than HX and the MH ballasts have higher OCV which will start even very worn mercury lamps. I do have a vintage 3000k halide I use in this fixture occasionally.
I don't know the age of the 3000K one - I'm guessing late 1980's. My Unalux HPS retrofit lamp can't be used on this, but an EYE retrofit lamp will (though I don't have one of this wattage). My OV-20 has had each type of lamp (250w) in it at some point.
Is there a difference in the electrical characteristics of the HPS retrofit lamps and if they can be used on HX, CWA, etc. ballasts?
Am I correct that those HX-NPF ballasts are like the cheap NPF residential-grade "Shoplite" ballasts and the CWA ballasts drive the lamps better?
The Unalux lamps can't be used on a CWA ballast as they have a neon-argon fill; the Iwasaki/EYE lamps use a FEC ignitor and the common Xenon fill so they can run on any ballast. The nice thing about CWA ballasts, particularly in my lighting display, is they draw a constant current, so the electrical system isn't hit with a high (i.e. 4 amp) current during lamp warm-up. Turn two many NPF-ballasted fixtures on at once...the breaker trips.
Huh, never knew that! Or maybe City Light would bill you for dirtying up the grid with bad power factor if you were a business...
I always learn something new every day on LG/GOL...thanks for the friendly info-sharing!
@ Andy; actually no, HX ballasts are very good. They just aren't as good with regulating voltage (like start-up, power dips, etc) since there is no capacitor. HID ballasts are a whole different ball game from fluorescent ballasts.
A typical shoplite ballast is inefficent and cheaply made. If from a good brand like Advace or Universal, reactance and reactor ballasts are neither of those things. They have the fewest ballast wattage losses of the HID family (not counting those cheesy electronic ballasts which can be considered equal to a cheap shoplite ballast) and are built like TANKS! The only drawback is since there's no cap, the voltage delivered and curretn drawn can vary between start up and general operation.
If anything, CWA is "like the cheap NPF residential-grade "Shoplite" ballasts" of magnetic HIDs since if you leave an EOL or missing lamp in it, it'll die. CWI ballasts are really the best ballast you can by for an HID since the voltage is very constant and clean but they are expensive and have higher ballast losses. HX and reactors are the most efficent ballasts, as they're the most basic.
Another thing to remember is that all HID ballasts run the lamps at 100% power unlike fluorescent ballasts which typically underdrive and some overdrive the lamps. So an HX ballast running a 175W merc will give you the same amount of light as a CWA or CWI running a 175W merc. CWA and CWI are more flexible with multi-voltage too i think. Most if not all reactance or reactor ballasts are single tap. Dual-wattage ballasts are HX IIRC.
So every HID ballast has its place, just like all lamp types have their place. With fluorescents IMO they should make all ballasts run the lamps at 100% power but only dimmable ballasts are liek that.
And since most power companies used NPF reactors and reactance ballasts for low wattage street lights, i don't think they are really in a position to be billing other people. They're the most efficient! so the power company would be billing them for using less power. If there's a slight dip in the power for a couple seconds a CWI ballast can actually keep the lamp's voltage the same though its cap. with a reactance or reactor ballast, if there's a spike or dip in the line voltage, the lamp suffers from that.
What "Dies" with a bad/missing lamp on a CWA ballast? The cap? Do the F-can ones (that look like a regular florescent ballast but bigger) have the CLASS P thermal resetting protection?
My (CWA? CWI) 400w Lithiona Hi-Tek highbay will withstand brief power "Flickers" (heavy appliances being turned on) without restriking. My yardlight (175w MV) won't.
Will cheap residential-grade magnetic rapid-start LPF ballasts die from bad lamps? I'm wondering since I've seen multiple cases of bad/rectifying lamps (that were like that for awhile) replaced and the ballast dying shortly after, sometimes not exactly passively...
I can understand cheapifying residential-grade shoplight fuxtures, but they should never have done that NPF ballast thing until those "Keystone" type ballasts came out. The older LPF ballasts (Advance "Benchlite", etc.) have a line current of .85 amps, higher than .8 amp rapid start ballasts! (unless you count those .85 HPF Advance ones from the 60s but they're practically from the dark ages compared to what we're talking about, so...)
The "Keystone" ballasts draw much less than their older counterparts and start differently too! They usually draw (I think .62 amps (WAY less) than the older ones. From what Aaron (Alights) has told me they are basically a weird "Preheat"-like ballast in that the current is limited by chokes (the guts of my dead (circa 2009) .72 amp Keystone seem to confirm this: each lamp had a "Choke". The "Starter" is this HPS-ignitor-like thing that shoots high-voltage pules through the lamps (but somehow the cathodes also glow during preheating on the IPP one in a Lithiona shoplight I have). From what I understand it's the same idea as those weird LOA capacitive-ballasted shoplights, only (somewhat) more robust. With a power dip (heavy appliance turning on) they do sometimes go out and relight. So they're almost a preheat ballast, although they claim to be rapid start and say to use rapid start lamps. I know Lithiona and American florescent make similar (if not identical) fixtures with ballasts like this.
I think a .8 amp ballast runs lamps at full 40w...
And in my garage there's a modern Lithiona shoplight with one of the above-described "Ballasts" (BTW I forgot to mention they run lamps in paralell so if one is missing or dead the other still lights) and in the same room is (currently) my work-in-progress Sears shoplight with a good ol' HPF .8 amp ballast!
I believe the cap (or the non protected ones) shorts which causes a current increase in the ballast coils and overheats them.
CWA ballasts have better regulation and can handle short line voltages dips (such as when starting heavy equipment) better because of the cap. Since HX ballast are just a autotransformer with a magnetic shunt to limit current, it dosen't really provide regulation.
The NPF ballast had a line current of 0.85A but in reality only draws around 40w power. Later NPF ballasts drew around 33w with a current of 0.65A This is because of it's poor power factor of 0.5-0.6. Power factor (PF) simply put is a ratio between the volt-amps drawn (V*I) and the real power drawn (P). (There's a lot more which I won't in depth on here) This can be easily found if you have a Kill-A-Watt meter on hand. Inductive loads such as in a magnetic ballast usually have a poor power factor and well as a pure capacitive load. A resistive load such a incandescent has a 1.00 PF. A capacitor is used to correct poor PF because it cancels out the effects of the inductor. (Capacitive current lead the main phase, inductive lags. Putting them together cancels them out).
Now something different from power factor is the ballast factor, ballast factor (BF) is the ratio of the current the lamp is driven at over the ratio of the correct current for said lamp. Here's where it gets interesting, a ballast can draw 0.80A but only have a 0.70 BF if the ballast has a inefficient design. On the other hand a 0.75A ballast if efficiently designed can have a BF or 0.9 or better. Ballast factor has only appeared in literature in recent years but low BF ballasts have been on the market for decades. GE had the Circle-Dot series which was a HPF but LBF ballast intended to save energy.
It might depending on the ballast design since I've noticed HPF F20 ballasts tend to both have a higher BF for F20 and have a more constant BF across the different lamp sizes.
Varying ballast factor came about in response to improving fluorescent lamp phosphors. Low ballast factor ballasts were originally intended to light new modern halophosphate lamps to a similar brightness to earlier beryllium zync and early halophosphate lamps.
Imagine if you had an office space that has a large installation of preheat fluorescent lights, designed for even lighting at a specific lighting level, with the original tubes being std. cool white early halophosphates. As they start to fail and need to be relamped, new cool white tubes are purchased and installed, but the areas with new tubes are now over illuminated and the light level is no longer consistent. In this case, new ballasts with a reduced ballast factor are purchased and installed (presumably rapid start conversions at this point). The lower output ballasts combined with the higher output phosphors of the new tubes bring the lighting levels back down to the original designed level.
I bought some programmed start T8 ballasts, and had a choice of low (0.71), normal (0.89) or high (1.15) ballast factors.
That just seems odd that they'd do that. So the area would be brighter, so what? Seems odd that manufacturers thought it was such a big deal. The average person isn't observant enough to even notice the difference. If anything, it would just make sense to offer "old school" dimmer lamps as an option for preexisting fixtures that desperately needed to maintain a precise lighting level for whatever reason.
What annoys me is that they have low, normal, and high ballast factor, but no ballasts (aside from T5s for whatever reason) drive the lamps at 100%. In my opinion, 1.0BF ballasts should be the "normal" with low ballast factor being most suited for T12 retrofits and high ballast factor suitable for places needing more lumens per lamp. IMO HBF is the way to go for new lighting installations since you can end up using fewer lamps.
But not all of them are. With magnetic ballasts especially, you don't even have a clue how hard the lamps are being powered since ballast factor wasn't even in the vocabulary back then. With magnetic ballasts, the BF can vary from ballast to ballast, even within the same batch, depending on the precise capacitor used or any variation in the coils. For reliability though, I totally side with magnetic ballasts from the 70s or older.
My personal favorite would be the early '80s models that are no-PCBs but still full power. And like I've said before I have quite a few LPF ballasts like the Advance "BenchLite" in use and in many applications they're just fine. (I'm typing under a fixture powered by a BenchLite as I type and it's plenty bright for just a desk light).
My favorite ballasts are the 70s Universal Therm-O-Matics. Those things are awesome.The problem with BenchLites IMO is that a full power F20T12 fixture puts out just as much light. IMO It's a waste of a 4ft fixture since a 2ft fixture could be used there and the 4ft fixture could get a full-power ballast and be used somewhere else. I just don't agree with LBF ballasts, expecially not those BenchLites; they're 3XLBF lol
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Am I correct that those HX-NPF ballasts are like the cheap NPF residential-grade "Shoplite" ballasts and the CWA ballasts drive the lamps better?
I always learn something new every day on LG/GOL...thanks for the friendly info-sharing!
A typical shoplite ballast is inefficent and cheaply made. If from a good brand like Advace or Universal, reactance and reactor ballasts are neither of those things. They have the fewest ballast wattage losses of the HID family (not counting those cheesy electronic ballasts which can be considered equal to a cheap shoplite ballast) and are built like TANKS! The only drawback is since there's no cap, the voltage delivered and curretn drawn can vary between start up and general operation.
If anything, CWA is "like the cheap NPF residential-grade "Shoplite" ballasts" of magnetic HIDs since if you leave an EOL or missing lamp in it, it'll die. CWI ballasts are really the best ballast you can by for an HID since the voltage is very constant and clean but they are expensive and have higher ballast losses. HX and reactors are the most efficent ballasts, as they're the most basic.
Another thing to remember is that all HID ballasts run the lamps at 100% power unlike fluorescent ballasts which typically underdrive and some overdrive the lamps. So an HX ballast running a 175W merc will give you the same amount of light as a CWA or CWI running a 175W merc. CWA and CWI are more flexible with multi-voltage too i think. Most if not all reactance or reactor ballasts are single tap. Dual-wattage ballasts are HX IIRC.
So every HID ballast has its place, just like all lamp types have their place. With fluorescents IMO they should make all ballasts run the lamps at 100% power but only dimmable ballasts are liek that.
And since most power companies used NPF reactors and reactance ballasts for low wattage street lights, i don't think they are really in a position to be billing other people. They're the most efficient! so the power company would be billing them for using less power.
My (CWA? CWI) 400w Lithiona Hi-Tek highbay will withstand brief power "Flickers" (heavy appliances being turned on) without restriking. My yardlight (175w MV) won't.
Will cheap residential-grade magnetic rapid-start LPF ballasts die from bad lamps? I'm wondering since I've seen multiple cases of bad/rectifying lamps (that were like that for awhile) replaced and the ballast dying shortly after, sometimes not exactly passively...
I can understand cheapifying residential-grade shoplight fuxtures, but they should never have done that NPF ballast thing until those "Keystone" type ballasts came out. The older LPF ballasts (Advance "Benchlite", etc.) have a line current of .85 amps, higher than .8 amp rapid start ballasts! (unless you count those .85 HPF Advance ones from the 60s but they're practically from the dark ages compared to what we're talking about, so...)
The "Keystone" ballasts draw much less than their older counterparts and start differently too! They usually draw (I think .62 amps (WAY less) than the older ones. From what Aaron (Alights) has told me they are basically a weird "Preheat"-like ballast in that the current is limited by chokes (the guts of my dead (circa 2009) .72 amp Keystone seem to confirm this: each lamp had a "Choke". The "Starter" is this HPS-ignitor-like thing that shoots high-voltage pules through the lamps (but somehow the cathodes also glow during preheating on the IPP one in a Lithiona shoplight I have). From what I understand it's the same idea as those weird LOA capacitive-ballasted shoplights, only (somewhat) more robust. With a power dip (heavy appliance turning on) they do sometimes go out and relight. So they're almost a preheat ballast, although they claim to be rapid start and say to use rapid start lamps. I know Lithiona and American florescent make similar (if not identical) fixtures with ballasts like this.
I think a .8 amp ballast runs lamps at full 40w...
And in my garage there's a modern Lithiona shoplight with one of the above-described "Ballasts" (BTW I forgot to mention they run lamps in paralell so if one is missing or dead the other still lights) and in the same room is (currently) my work-in-progress Sears shoplight with a good ol' HPF .8 amp ballast!
CWA ballasts have better regulation and can handle short line voltages dips (such as when starting heavy equipment) better because of the cap. Since HX ballast are just a autotransformer with a magnetic shunt to limit current, it dosen't really provide regulation.
The NPF ballast had a line current of 0.85A but in reality only draws around 40w power. Later NPF ballasts drew around 33w with a current of 0.65A This is because of it's poor power factor of 0.5-0.6. Power factor (PF) simply put is a ratio between the volt-amps drawn (V*I) and the real power drawn (P). (There's a lot more which I won't in depth on here) This can be easily found if you have a Kill-A-Watt meter on hand. Inductive loads such as in a magnetic ballast usually have a poor power factor and well as a pure capacitive load. A resistive load such a incandescent has a 1.00 PF. A capacitor is used to correct poor PF because it cancels out the effects of the inductor. (Capacitive current lead the main phase, inductive lags. Putting them together cancels them out).
Now something different from power factor is the ballast factor, ballast factor (BF) is the ratio of the current the lamp is driven at over the ratio of the correct current for said lamp. Here's where it gets interesting, a ballast can draw 0.80A but only have a 0.70 BF if the ballast has a inefficient design. On the other hand a 0.75A ballast if efficiently designed can have a BF or 0.9 or better. Ballast factor has only appeared in literature in recent years but low BF ballasts have been on the market for decades. GE had the Circle-Dot series which was a HPF but LBF ballast intended to save energy.
Imagine if you had an office space that has a large installation of preheat fluorescent lights, designed for even lighting at a specific lighting level, with the original tubes being std. cool white early halophosphates. As they start to fail and need to be relamped, new cool white tubes are purchased and installed, but the areas with new tubes are now over illuminated and the light level is no longer consistent. In this case, new ballasts with a reduced ballast factor are purchased and installed (presumably rapid start conversions at this point). The lower output ballasts combined with the higher output phosphors of the new tubes bring the lighting levels back down to the original designed level.
I bought some programmed start T8 ballasts, and had a choice of low (0.71), normal (0.89) or high (1.15) ballast factors.
What annoys me is that they have low, normal, and high ballast factor, but no ballasts (aside from T5s for whatever reason) drive the lamps at 100%. In my opinion, 1.0BF ballasts should be the "normal" with low ballast factor being most suited for T12 retrofits and high ballast factor suitable for places needing more lumens per lamp. IMO HBF is the way to go for new lighting installations since you can end up using fewer lamps.