In the 1979 GE lighting systems catalog, they advertise that you can buy their PM-117 luminaries in 175 Watt Lucalox. Is 175 Watt Lucalox a thing, or was it an error?

That sounds like an error to me but if they did exist, then they would be extremely rare

I don’t think that 175w high pressure sodium lamps were sold in North America, but there were some that were sold in Germany. The printing in that catalog was probably a typo.

 I remember sseing a YouTube video a while back that I think talked about the 175w version . I believe it was one of Rick DeLair's videos .

The only oddball Lucalox I've ever heard of was the 275W lamp...it was only on market for a very short time and was replaced with the 250W (S50) lamp.

What do the 275 watt LUCALOX lamps look like?

Never seen one, but I'd imagine they look like an LU250.

I believe there were several HPS wattages in the early days that re rated due to lamp reliability and market segmentation purposes. 125w, 175w, and 275w to name a few.

GE once imagined a 125w Lucalox in their early Lucalox lineup. Some were made but I'd imagine only as engineering samples prior to production.

I believe for a short while GE also offered the M-400A in a LU275 config. I'd imagine any that were installed either had a brief service life or were relamped with LU250 lamps after the initial 275w lamps needed relamping.

Norelco also either offered or proposed to offer 125w and 175w HPS lamps, as shown in this old ad. I'm not sure if anything came out of it as no one seems to have either wattage lamp in collections. Still I suppose some samples were made as there are photographs of both wattages in the ad. Interestingly the ad depicted them with E26 bases and in ED17 to ED23.5 sized envelopes.

That ad for Norelco is one of my favorites, it seems so… direct(?) towards their competitors at the time. Kinda funny how Philips eventually bought out one of those. IIRC didn’t GE make a ad in response saying how LPS was ugly or something like that?

That must have been a typo with the correct wattage being 275 W. Below is a snapshot of the Lucalox range showcased by GE in September 1966 (only the 400 W model was commercially available at that time), and there is no 175 W lamp. The 275 W lamp was released later in the second half of the 1960s, only to be replaced by the standard 250 W model in 1969.


That being said, it is surprising of GE to still offer a luminaire ballasted for a lamp that had been phased out a decade earlier. Are you sure that it wasn't for a 175 W Multi-Vapor or Mercury lamp that this PM-117 luminaire was available for instead of Lucalox? If so, then that could be the typo.

Those lamps look pretty cool! I bet finding one of those 700 watt HPS lamps is going to be extremely rare!

I have one of such early 700 W HPS lamps from Philips. It sure is a very rare model!

Sweet! Do you happen to have a picture of it?

There was a 175W HPS lamp existing in America shortly before this date.  It was a compact version with medium screw base and diffuse ellipsoidal bulb.  See for instance here.  I do not recall seeing them listed in GE catalogues though (only the smaller 125W), but that company's Lighting Systems division did make luminaires for some lamp types not available from GE so it's not impossible that they could have offered such a type.  I seems unusual though, since the 150W rating had already become common by 1979.  So I expect it is a typo.