I notice that the capacitors on Cooper fixtures are also kind of a weak point, I’ve seen some of those glowing a dim and deep orange as well. I noticed that AEL’s have the most issues with igniters. Coopers I believe have the worst ballasts and igniters. It’s not too uncommon to find a Cooper OVX/OVZ that glows a dim and deep orange. I’ve seen several newer GE fixtures (TC-100, P17M, 201SA, M250R2, M250A2, M400A, M400, etc) with a dim and deep orange glow.
The T&B era seems to be pretty decent in quality, and I noticed that AEL fixtures use better capacitors than other brands (i’ve seen less AEL’s with a dim deep orange than Cooper’s or GE’s, though i’ve still seen them too). AEL’s capacitors seem better than GE’s or Cooper’s. AEL in the pre-Acuity era were actually decent quality.
I believe Cooper fixtures are the worst when it comes to ballasts. GE and Cooper fixtures have more issues with the door seals than AEL’s. AEL’s older MV fixtures seem to be very reliable (ths AEL 113 is one of the most common modern fixtures to find in mercury vapor, though the 250R2 is also relatively common to find MV as a modern fixture). Those old AEL’s might be as reliable as the old GE’s, if not more. Mercury vapor fixtures in general seem more reliable than HPS ones. Though I’ve heard that the newer Cooper MV fixtures had more issues with their reliability. Probe start metal halide also seems more reliable when it comes to actual ballast life (not the bulb). Cooper’s early fixtures (e.g. OVS, OVM) were built like tanks. GE fixtures are also most likely to survive cycling (I’ve seen some cycling for 5+ years without any failure), if an AEL fixture was cycling for that long, the igniter would probably be failed. AEL’s older mercury fixtures might be just as good as GE’s when it came to reliability. MV 113’s are very common to find MV when it comes to modern fixtures, from 1980s to 2000s. Those seemed to be reliable. I don’t know much about PSMH but I’m assuming they’d have a similar failure rate to HPS fixtures because both use an igniter.
GE probably made the most reliable HPS fixtures overall, GE HPS fixtures I noticed get replaced less frequently than any other brand, though pre-Acuity AEL is also very reliable. All GE fixtures from the 1960s through the early 1990s were built like tanks.
In my experience, AEL probably made worse fixtures in reliability than Cooper in more recent times. I’ve seen more newer 115’s replaced early than newer Coopers. In general, both Cooper and modern AEL were poor quality. In the 2010s, if a city or town wanted something that would last they had to go with GE.
The 2000s era HPS 115’s didn't seem too bad, though. 2010s era AEL was awful.
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