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Re:Electronic Ballast
A question was raised about running 2 30watt lamps with a ballast
intended for 2 32 watt lamps. I assume that the 30 watt lamps are
'standard' 30 watt lamps of the t-12 or t-8 type, while the ballast is
meant to run 2 high efficiency t-8s. I had an 'enlightening'email
discussion with an Osram tech support guy some months back about just this
topic. What he explained to me went against what I understood about how
ballasts work. I had intended to post our email discussion here some
time ago, but life got in the way. I'll have to go dig out the mail
tomorrow, if I get a chance, but the gist of it was that I thought it
wouldn't be a problem, and at worst you might over-drive your lamps a bit;
the tech support guy thought it would be a problem, for reasons I forget
now, and didn't make sense to me at the time. So, let me ask too: Why
couldn't or could I run say four 3', 30watt Ultra Tri-lux lamps on an
electronic ballast meant to run four high-efficiency t-8 lamps? The
electronic ballasts I use say they are designed to run lamps of the
following types: 4 4' 32watt
4 3' 25watt
4 2' 17watt
One of my lamps can run 5' 40watt lamps as well. I've run 30watt
'standard' lamps on them before, but I don't know what negative things
might have been happening to the lamps or their light output while i was
doing so. I'm very curious what our resident experts have to say on this
matter.
Andrew
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