Since of the covid 19 outbreak I got laid off and EI isint paying very much, so to temporarily to minimize my electric cost I want to put some GE bright stick LEDs in my 70 watt HPS fixture I got 3 that run every night by doing this will it hurt the ballast? I plan on switching back to HPS once this whole thing is over

Or even CFL as it's more interesting then led

Or even CFL as it's more interesting then led

I wouldn't even bother if it were me. The cost to run a 70 watt HPS I think is pretty cheap. Like dollars per month. Unless the extra couple dollars is really gonna help I'd leave them HPS. Otherwise I'd suggest bypassing the ballast if you're going to run LED or CFL.

There are a few things that could happen :

The LED lamp will let the ignitor run continuously, overloading it. The overloaded ignitor may get at least cumulative damage from such use. If it fails and shorts the ballast output, it will destroy the ballast

The LED lamp itself may be damaged by the ignitor output voltage

If the LED lamp shorts, its current will be limited by the ballast. This means that instead of going quickly with blowing a fuse or some other component, it could keep burning up for a while, so something could melt and damage the luminaire. If it does not burn up open circuit in a short time, it will also destroy the ballast

Not in 70W but in 250W and up on 120V (if anyone else wants to try something like this), the ballast is a step up transformer. Then it will supply too high voltage to the LED lamp in the first place



You can calculate how much it will cost to run, or disconnect the ballast and ignitor to use it with the LED lamp safely

To be honest, I would just bypass the ballast in this case. Pretty easy to do for a 120v 70w HPS fixture.