Re: [APD] 20 watt bulbs where min 25 watt go

["Jim Seidman" <js5 at seidman_net>]

Candy -

Your shop light probably is using a cheap magnetic ballast. If I were you,
I would throw it away and purchase an electronic ballast instead.

At least in my experience, the electronic ballast will produce noticeably
more light from the exact same bulb, with a longer bulb life. Also, the
ballast itself consumes less power and thus puts out less heat, which may
or may not matter to you.

As far as overdriving, I tried to overdrive 15W bulbs by using a ballast
rated for 25-40W bulbs. It didn't noticeably work. The ballast was
self-adjusting to run different sized bulbs at similar power factors, and
so it ran my 18W bulb at something close to 18W. I wound up getting a
ballast designed for 4 bulbs to drive my 2 bulbs, and tied pairs of wires
together so that the "feed" for two bulbs was going into one bulb. That
made them visibly brighter.

- Jim

_______________________________________________
Aquatic-Plants mailing list
Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com
http://www.actwin.com/mailman/listinfo.cgi/aquatic-plants