While doing research on lighting systems around the world, one of the silliest things I have noticed is that North American countries in particular have developed HID light fixtures and ballasts designed for HID lamps BELOW 700W that are designed for mains voltages above 380V. I have seen evidence of low wattage Japanese HID ballasts being designed for mains voltages between 415-460V, but those tend to be very uncommon.

For example, I have seen examples of North American 150W S55 high pressure sodium ballasts designed for a 480V 60Hz mains supply.

In most countries outside of North America, I have largely seen that light fixtures and ballasts designed for mains voltages above 380V are largely reserved for very high power HID lamps such as 2000W metal halide lamps or 3500W metal halide lamps.

Strangely enough, I just find it silly that North American countries have apparently made heavy use of low wattage HID light fixtures designed for 480V 60Hz mains while most other countries would reserve such high mains voltages for very high powered HID lighting. Why is this so?

Vast territories to cover. Significant savings on wire cross section.

The math is about how much costs to make and maintain more expensive specialized high voltage ballasts, vs more expensive wiring, extra dedicated distribution transformers for subsections of the system.

In North America the mainstream voltage level (so which ballasts are usually the cheapest and easiest to get) is for this lighting 120V, elsewhere 230V. That means the wiring is getting too expensive for significantly smaller distances than the 230V world (the "120V" lighting tends to run effectively 207V or 240V wiring, the "230V" world 400V wiring, still about factor of 2 difference).
So the limit when to do something is really low.

When the system gets really large, it makes sense to distribute the power at even way higher voltage levels and add extra transformers to convert that to the voltage used for the lights alone. But building these subnetworks brings even more expenses, so makes sense only for really large installations (otherwise they rely on general public distribution systems to get the voltage the ballasts need).

Now in 230V areas the 3x230/400 can cover large enough areas so the next step is directly the high voltage main distribution with 3x230/400 subnets, still sufficing with just the standard voltage ballasts.
The 2x120/240 or 3x120/207 (running common "120V" ballasts are distance restricted so much, it makes room where it makes sense to make extra voltage distribution level directly for the ballasts before going for the expense of the real high voltage distribution. It means rather expensive specialty ballasts, but can cover significantly larger distances without going to the even more expensive high voltage with extra transformers. On "230V" the systems where this could eventually mmake some sense is way narrower (because the direct 3x230/400 covers more), so such market is relatively much smaller, so the special equipment would become way more expensive, so it makes more sense to either go for thicker wires at 3x230/400 or go the high voltage (usually the common 22kV in "230V" world) way.