I hate that Mercury Vapor bulbs are going to be banned in 2016.

Who ever agrees with me ,please post below.

The banning of bulbs sucks plain and simple!

MV bulbs (esp the clear ones) have an awesome color

Just because other technologies look better on paper doesn't mean they are always the best. Mercury is simple, dependable, and effective. It should be one of the options available to designers/maintenance/contractors/manufacturers etc.

Manufactirer catalogs still have MV fixtures, so i think this stuff is gonna stay for a while

And yes, like the color they make and the fact that some MV's i have seen have worked >20 years full-night and still keep going, I dont think any other lamp (except FL / LED) can beat that



If the ban takes place, is it possible to do get exact 'mercury' lamp color with a metal halide / CFL ? (possibly a bit underpowered if it\ll get more blue if it will help)

And yes, like the color they make and the fact that some MV's i have seen have worked >20 years full-night and still keep going, I dont think any other lamp (except FL / LED) can beat that

I would not call that "working", but "heavily neglected maintenance", MV's usually lasted (= give the output the lighting was designed for) for ~3..4 years and then require relamping...

But indeed, I've never heard of any totally dark MV fixture, where the lamp was at primary fault.
And I think this was general experience, even leading to the maintenance rule from MV era: "If you fix non-working fixture, never replace the lamp only, but always replace the whole fixture and take nonworking one to the shop for repair". It was always the case, then there was some fault in the fixture (interturn short in the ballast, loose connection, some short circuit developing, leaking water,...), what at the next kill the lamp in short time. There was very frequent experience, when someone (mostly due to neglience to work procedures - e.g. not packing in some replacement fixtures to the truck) replaced only the lamp at the place, the new one stayed operating only for short time...

Nope. The area is maintained well. Since the beginning they used to relamp exclusively with HPS, so it is obvious which lanterns were original. The MVs there were giving ok light output, not dim like EOL MV

@Ash: This 2016 MV ban is in the US. In Europe the MV ban will be in 2015.
I and you are both israeli members and i don't know if in Israel, a ban of the mercury lamps is planned to be formed.

I hope there wont be

Whats weird, catalogs of europe light fixture manufacturers contine to list new MV fixtures, sometimes even without stating HPS option (besides that you can run HPS 70 W integral start on MV balast)

Ash: A simple HPS 70W with internal ignitor, can't operate on MV ballast.
There are HPS lamps that can operates from MV ballasts indeed, but they have special wattage rating and are available for ballast of 125W MV lamps and above.
Most of the HPS retrofits for MV ballasts have simply a neon-argon penning mixture and a starting coil around the arctube to start them directly from the main voltage, with MV ballast (Because of this, they glows red when turned on), but several (Ie. Philips SON-H Pro) use the usual xenon starting gas, and uses a glow starter in additional to the starting coil, so as to get the full HPS efficiency on MV ballast.

HPS 70W with internal start is the drop-in replacement for 80W MV about anywhere in Israel that used to have 80W MV. Check out all those white balls on the pathways

Ash: Do you wan't to say me, that in all of the 80W mercury lanterns in Israel that upgraded to 70W HPS lamps with internal glow starters that i saw, the 70W HPS lamps operates DIRECTLY on the original 80W MV ballasts of these lanterns without any problems!?!?!?
Medved, Max and James, the experts of LG, what do you have to say about this?

I'm stalking up on lol the westies I can get

The thing that upsets me most about the MV ban is that there is no drop-in replacement option, so thousands of fixtures will end up in landfills. This has not been an issue with previous lighting bans, where there was always an easy drop-in replacement option that allowed people to keep their old fixtures. Sure, we can't get standard incandescents anymore, but there's a ton of retrofit lamps out there. Sure, we can't get most colors of F40 and F96T12s anymore, but there are high-CRI versions that will work just fine. Even the banned T12 magnetic ballasts have electronic equivalents that are a direct replacement. With MVs, however, a lamp AND ballast change is necessary to keep the same fixture, which will prove to be too much work for most people. I hope someone will come up with a reasonably-priced MH or HPS retrofit lamp for MV fixtures, but manufacturers aren't likely to put that much effort into this since LEDs are the focus of innovation. It's a shame, really. I'm going to miss seeing the OV-25s with their clear 400W MV lamps every night. This will also likely be the end for the two Form 400s in my area that have been in service for probably close to 60 years. The clear lamp in the one that is more visible is finally starting to dim out. I'm not excited for the day when I drive by and there's an LED in its place.

As i mentioned, i seen cases where a "close enough" lamp (that is not really meant for the gear) was fitted and it works fine...

Perhaps in your case, it is possible to add ignitor and use MH lamp on the Mercury ballast

(Here in 240V land the Mercury lamps have their own specs, and MH follows the HPS specs for the lower power lamps)

As far as I know they do make metal halide replacements but I dont know the price for it.