It is standard practice to use a single coil filament as the ballast. The main reason for this is that SC filaments are better from the point of view of vibration resistance. A CC filament in streetlighting service with wind vibrations would not be expected to last very long.
Also since only about 1/3 of the light of a mercury blended lamp is made by the filament, the relative advantage of using a CC filament is small.
The third reason is because of arcing. The filament in a typical 230V 160W SBMV lamp is rated about 160 Volts, but immediately after switch-on when the arc tube voltage is low, about 210V is applied across the filament, severely over-loading it. Due to the shorter length of a CC filament and the higher voltage gradient, when they are over-run to this extent, arcing can occurr, which would destroy the filament. SC filaments are somewhat longer and are less prone to failure by arcing.
As a consequence of these factors, I am not aware of any lampmakers (except some Chinese) who are using CC filaments in mercury blended lamps.
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