I took apart an old RC plane receiver from the early 90s. It's really full and tight in that tiny box.

I'm eating ramen at the computer right now.

I have never seen HPS lamps over 1000W or 1100W at most.
Is there a technical limitation for this?

Imagine how bright a 2000W, or 3500W HPS would be...

Might be different in, say, Brazilian plant than American. Also the datasheet is not for your specific batch, it will rather be approximation of lm/W of that family of HPS lamps. I think the box is more accurate; the datasheet might just be rounded to the nearest ten.

I have a 400W OSRAM Vialox NAV-E which was made in Brazil in July 2014.
It's box says it has 47000lm and 117lm/W.
However LEDVANCE/OSRAM's official documentation says it has 48000lm at 120lm/W.

Which of these is correct? Or both are?

AEL had the best quality components and overall construction during the ITT years...

I remember seeing them a lot in stores like Best Buy, Loblaws (when they still used MH high bays) and also in some malls that kept HID recessed lighting after the 90s.

There is a mall here that had hundreds of 175w MV cans from the 70s, with most of them retrofitted to 100w 3000K coated PSMH until they replaced with LED cans earlier this year.

Now I get why MH wasn’t used. Their lifespan was short, and if a plastic refractor was used, it could potentially melt or catch on fire if the bulb ruptured. Cooper for a while made the mistake by using plastic refractors on MH cobras. Both GE and AEL only offered them with glass. I don’t think an MH bulb explosion would shatter the glass refractors, as the refractor is less fragile than the bulb.

That wasn’t usually a worry with HPS or MV. They could use an acrylic or polycarbonate lens without worrying about a fire risk (as long as it’s being used for an appropriate wattage). The only worse technology to use on a street that is worse in terms of lifespan than MH would be incandescent. I bet even sticking a CFL bulb in a street loght would easily last longer than an MH bulb. Especially since most of the modern MH bulbs are horrible quality. The older Sylvania and GE MH bulbs were pretty good quality and lasted a good while for MH, but all the newer ones seem to be junk and often don’t even last their rated life. Philips MH lamps have always been kind of bad, but even those lasted longer than the latest lamps.

Let’s not forget, PSMH bulbs over 150 watts or “super metal halide lamps” are notoriously hard to find and are often expensive, so PSMH fixtures were frequently mislamped with probe start bulbs. Some people even intentionally disconnected the igniters on higher wattage PSMH fixtures so they could run probe start MH or mercury lamps. Finding one that has a universal burn position, is coated, etc, is especially difficult. Mercury vapor lamps, on the other hand, lasted a long time and usually lasted around 24,000 hours before lumen depreciation began. They were readily available until recently when all the manufacturers began voluntarily discontinuing the items. I’ve actually seen probe start MH lamps on MV ballasts before, to replace Mercury vapor bulbs that were dim because they were NLA. I think a probe start MH would be a bit underdriven on an MV ballast but I think it’d still strike.

Now, I get why metal halide wasn’t common as street lights, while they provided good light quality, the combination of shorter lifespan, rapid lumen depreciation, and hard to find bulbs, made them stick with MV and HPS instead.

I’ve been noticing that AEL’s newer HID fixtures (especially their HPS models, I haven’t seen enough PSMH models to confirm) seem to have issues with the igniters in particular. That’s one thing I’ve noticed about newer AEL products. I notice that the newer AEL’s often show signs of igniter failure (dim flashing, not working, or working intermittently) earlier than the GE and Cooper fixtures from the same time. And, sometimes, the igniters fail when without the lamp cycling.

At this point, the newer AEL’s fixtures might be less reliable than Coopers. Cooper and GE fixtures seem to both have more better igniters then AEL’s. I’m not sure when this became an issue, but all of AEL’s newer fixtures seem to have problems with the igniter. I’ve seen several newer 2010s AEL cobra heads that stopped working. The ballasts may also be a weak point.

It seems that AEL became the lowest quality brand (even modern Coopers were probably more reliable), from purple LED street lights to poor quality igniters in HPS fixtures.

I know the Cooper/McGraw Edison UTR Traditionaire, GE TC-100, and American Electric 247 were commonly installed as MV or HPS fixtures for a long time (with common wattages being 175W MV, 100W HPS, or 150W HPS, or 50-70W HPS/100W MV in some regions that use a lower wattage, especially in residential subdivisions, etc. AEL and GE offered them with horizontal lamps, and GE had a vertical mount. They also made them in MH, though they’re relatively rare compared to the HPS or MV versions in most cases. In mh area, they seem common in condo complexes as 100 or 150 watt HPS.

I know they launched more post tops later, like the Cooper Lexington or the GE Salem. The Lexington became a quite common fixture as well, most commonly HPS or MV, but sometimes MH. The Salem was common in certain places.

Eventually, FCO post tops became a thing, most often LED, but they also made them in HPS and I think MH too. What do you think of those post tops? Do you prefer the FCO ones or the standard ones?

Just like with cobra heads, the coach style lanterns seem uncommon in metal halide compared to HPS or MV. MH was relatively common for acorn fixtures, though. I’ve likely seen MH acorns with the acrylic or polycarbonate globe even more than the HPS ones. I’ve seen more of the Holophane Granvilles in HPS but I’ve seen some in MH too.

American Electric 247’s made before 2008 I believe all used the arched tops. Those made 2008 or later didn’t seem to have the arched top. Some 247’s seem to have NEMA tags but some do not. In my area, it seems that they’re using FCO Cooper LED post tops to replace failed HPS ones in condo complexes. A few are not FCO, but most are

It seems that Cooper Traditionaire HID post tops often have refractors as panels. AEL and GE ones didn’t have that. All the LED versions of the coach style post tops seem to have the LEDs mounted in the roof of the fixture, even the Cooper ones, kind of like the idea of the horizontal mount TC-100 or AEL 247. Some variants of the Lexington also apparently used the horizontal bulb mount. I believe the newer GE TC-100’s had a slightly different hat design than the older ones did and the NEMA tags all were different. Somewhere in the 2000s, AEL made a copy of the UTR Traditionaire I believe.

The atomic style fixtures also became common (AEL Comtempo, GE PM series, GE P17M, Westinghouse Pinto, etc), also were quite common, also frequently running HPS and MV lamps.

Acorns are common as HPS, MH, and LED. Mercury vapor acorns seem very rare but apparently Charleston, SC used some acorns with blue NEMA tags (VERY unusual to find a NEMA tag on an acorn to begin with, but that means they were MV which makes it even more unusual), but acorns in Charleston seemed to have them. What is your favorite design of post tops? Of course we also have other designs, such as the RSL-350 (usually HPS if used on a city-owned street, but Cracker Barrel uses MH versions) and/or the New Haven and whatever that GE model was (GE made one that was similar to the Cooper). I’ve seen more incandescent acorns and globe fixtures than mercury acorns and globe fixtures. I’ve never been to Charleston, that is only based on images I’ve seen on Google Streetview,

McGraw Lawn-Glo fixtures I’ve seen many times (or fixtures that appear to be them) on people’s front yards with standard light sockets (ones with HID lamps seem very rare), as I’ve only seen them in standard incandescent, but I know they made them in 100W MV and 50-150W HPS and I think those came with mogul base sockets va the medium base on the incandescent fixture.