2X40w Sleeping Monster!

This may appear at first glance to be a standard 2X40w rapid start fixture. But look closely and you may notice the slimline ballast in there. It's an old Advance from February 1989. As is often typical of Advance ballasts of this era, the capacitors tend to go bad, causing a drop in lamp current. Therefore it had/has issues starting the intended 8ft lamps (Albeit 60w energy savers; that's all I have), particularly in cold weather and/or with low line voltage. So since it's more or less useless for the intended task I decided to use it here. I'm curious to see how this does in cold, and with spent lamps. I think the fireworks show could potentially be very interesting!

I first let it run a good three hours with 40w lamps and am now giving it the 34w test. We shall see. So far so good.

I really wish I had a Kill-A-Watt so see how the power draw and power factor on the line side is as opposed to what the alleged specs on the ballast are. I'd probably try it again with 8ft lamps to compare if I did.