Doing a little test with a running two 100w MV lamps on a F96T12/HO ballast. The F96T12 lamps run at 800mA which is close in lamp current to your 100w mercury vapour. This setup seems to work ok the lamps did run up to full arc voltage, but it seems to be picky with what lamps are paired up. I'll have to get some decent identical mercury lamps and give it another try.
I think for around 30 mins max, just enough to get the lamps to full arc voltage. I'll need to dig out some identical lamps and redo the test. I should have a pair of new Philips 100w /DX A23 mercs somewhere.
Yeah, I think they were commonly used for dual clamshell poles and some highbay setups that had two lamps. I believe most were just standard CWA ballasts but with a higher OCV to reliably start and run two lamps.
They really ran them in series? I've heard of paintcan ballasts that operate two 400W MV lamps in parallel (basically two ballasts in a common can) but never heard of the series-wired ones.
Yeah some of them did, here's a pic of one. I've heard of some of the two lamp mercury ballasts having a preheat tulamp style parallel lead lag setup but I don't think I've seen a pic of one.
Yeah, I'll have to try again. I have a pair of more or less identical Philips A23 /DX 100w lamps that could be used a test subjects. The pair in the picture seems to be ok too.
I tried with the Sylvania and a Caster lamp both bascially brand new and the Sylvania would run up to a pretty high arc voltage quickly and the Caster would slowly run up to 70v. I didn't let them run long since the Sylvania looked overdriven.
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But yep, this would work best with identical lamps, otherwize you may end up with one overdriven a bit & the other underdriven a bit.
I tried with the Sylvania and a Caster lamp both bascially brand new and the Sylvania would run up to a pretty high arc voltage quickly and the Caster would slowly run up to 70v. I didn't let them run long since the Sylvania looked overdriven.