Smart way of doing it, but I am guessing it is because GE does not offer the older GE M-250A1 replacement doors?

I know my electric company in my area still has the newer GE M-400A2 powerdoors....

I noticed the power company here has been removing the door/lens assemblies from some M250R's. I'm guessing it's also to mark the fixtures that will be replaced.

I wonder if the modern M-250A2 ballast kits would work? but even if they did they would still replace the fixture. Westfield was big with the OVZ model for years but switched to GE. I've already seen OVZ put up in the last 2 years already replaced, and when they go they just take the whole door off the fixtures when there marked as bad.

My power company removes failed fixtures from their brackets to indicate that they need to be replaced, occasionally.

Here they just carry a bunch of fixtures on the truck, that way they can replace a fixture without having to make a second trip. They also have a tendency of replacing cycling fixtures here too, for some reason.

*Update* It's been 2 months since I posted this Picture and they have not replaced the fixture yet!

What in the world are they waiting for?

Here they do what Niall described. They keep a few boxes of M-250R2s in the back of the truck. The boxes must be brought in every night otherwise they'd probably fall apart due to rain.

When I talked to the linemen here I got to look in the back of their truck, they had three of each wattage on some racks, the where unboxed.

When I got out on Light duty, I'll take a few fixtures with each wattage with me to change out the fixture If needed. We do not service the city so I'm not sure what they do as for replacement practices.

I'd guess they had the three wattages they use; 50, 100, and 250. The M-400 are only installed by request, so those are probably not carried on the truck. A couple of years ago NGrid was replacing 400w mercs with 400w HPS and 100w mercs with 100w HPS, but they seemed to have stopped that now.

I normally take 2 70,2 100, 2 150, 2 250 and 2 400 watt HPS fixtures On my truck. I'll only take 1k Fixtures if I know I'm going to one and we have very little 50 watt lights in our system. If I go to a merc fixture and the fixture is bad, 100 and 175 watters become 70 watt HPS, 250 become 150 watt HPS and 400 watt Become 250 watt HPS per company standards.

Here it's mostly like this:
MV: HPS:
100 50
175 100
400* 250
1000** 400
* 400w MV floods are replaced with 400w HPS floods.
** 1000w is only found in flood lights.
I've never seen a 250w merc installed around here, but if any were, they'd probably get replaced with 250w HPS since 100w HPS would be WAY to dim. I personally think 100w MV to 50w HPS is a big drop, but 175w MV to 100w HPS seems alright.

Around my area, defective MV lights are replaced on a lumens per watt basis.
MV: HPS:
175 100
250 200
400 200 and 400 occasionally
1000 400

This light if it ever gets replaced now will become a AEL 115 since recently Westfield changed from GE to AEL.

I saw a streetlight in my area removed from it's bracket in June 2006, the power company didn't install a replacement fixture until November 2007.