Author Topic: American mercury lamps on European gear  (Read 3337 times)
Proteus
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American mercury lamps on European gear « on: December 16, 2018, 02:10:57 PM » Author: Proteus
Hi there!

I would like to know if there would be any suitable constellation for ballasting American mercury lamps on European 230V 50Hz line.

To be honest, I like these clear MV lamps that much, and they are so damn rare over here that I don't want to just use my few very rare clear MV lamps for general lighting purposes. So I'm thinking about to buy some clear American MV lamps - Usually they should fit into E27 bases.

What are the specifications of those different MV bulbs, in particular:

50W
75W
100W
175W

And is there a possibility to run them here, even with little dropped lifetime because of no proper gear?

Regards... Marc
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funkybulb
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Re: American mercury lamps on European gear « Reply #1 on: December 16, 2018, 02:50:40 PM » Author: funkybulb
175 watt is E39   it can run on EU 150 watt Son/MH  gear with out a ignitor.

100 watt MV can cone in E26 or E39  i can run on 100 watt
fluorescent chork or 70 watt  Son /MH  ballast  with out
ignitor.

75 watt MV  E26 use 70 watt 6 foot fluorescent choke

50 watt MV  E26 50 watt MV gear,  39 watt MH magnetic gear with out ignitor,  or 58 watt Fluorescent choke

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Re: American mercury lamps on European gear « Reply #2 on: December 16, 2018, 02:51:21 PM » Author: Max
Marc, it is possible to run US MV lamps on European systems - but first here are the specs of each lamps you listed (data from Sylvania 2004, for horizontal operation):

50W - 95V 0.60A 1650lm
75W - 133V 0.66A 2650lm
100W - 130V 0.88A 3380lm
175W - 128V 1.55A 7700lm

Now, for the ballasts (230 V / 50 Hz mains):

50W lamp requirement: ~270 Ohm - use standard 50W HPM choke (~260 Ohm)
75W lamp requirement: ~190 Ohm - use standard 50W HPS choke (~200 Ohm)
100W lamp requirement: ~150 Ohm - use standard 70W HPS choke (~160 Ohm)
175W lamp requirement: ~90 Ohm - use standard 150W HPS choke (~90 Ohm)
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Proteus
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Re: American mercury lamps on European gear « Reply #3 on: December 16, 2018, 04:02:27 PM » Author: Proteus
Thanks for your answers!

I am expecting just slightly less lifetime with the mentioned gear?
And yes, I forgot that 175W lamps come with E39 base, and 100W can come as well with this base. I think, an E39 bulb will fit as well into an E40 socket, if not I will order some  :)

Just strange these different wattages, over here we just know 50W - 80W - 125W - 250W - 400W - 700W - 1000W - and the former 2000W. And just to mention about, the highly mysterious 185W rating which monkeyface and me discovered on some ballasts around here ( https://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?album=1602&pos=21&pid=60997 ).

But I guess it's right, for you North-American people these clear MV lamps are much easier to get!
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Re: American mercury lamps on European gear « Reply #4 on: December 16, 2018, 04:22:32 PM » Author: Max
I am expecting just slightly less lifetime with the mentioned gear?

Depends on the lamp-ballast combination. We have a near perfect match in the case of the 175 W lamp, so it should last as specified. As for the other combinations, I except that the 75 and 100 W lamps will be slightly underdriven, so these should actually last a bit longer, although the difference will be marginal. The 50 W lamp will be slightly overdriven, no by much and this may impact its service life slightly.
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Re: American mercury lamps on European gear « Reply #5 on: December 16, 2018, 04:35:54 PM » Author: Proteus
@ Max: OK, so fortunately not worth to talk about it  ;) ;)

@funkybulb: What I wanted to tell is, unfortunately we don't use any 6ft 70W fluorescent tubes here. I think they are just used in the UK... But anyhow, with the 50W HPS ballast it would fit :)
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Re: American mercury lamps on European gear « Reply #6 on: December 16, 2018, 05:13:02 PM » Author: Max
@ Max: OK, so fortunately not worth to talk about it

I really don't think that you'll see any major difference in service life outside the normal statistical spread that applies to all HID lamps (i.e., the 24 kh rating is the point of 50 % failure in a large group of lamps; some individual lamps will last a shorter life and others will fail well after the rated life).
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sol
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Re: American mercury lamps on European gear « Reply #7 on: December 16, 2018, 09:03:35 PM » Author: sol
When using SON gear for North American MV lamps, remember to remove or deactivate the ignitor otherwise you’ll ruin the starting resistor and the starting probe will be useless. That will happen on a hot restike event, that is sure to become reality if you plan on regular use.

Clear MV looks quite good lighting leafy trees in the summer. Hope you’re able to enjoy this project for many years.
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Re: American mercury lamps on European gear « Reply #8 on: December 16, 2018, 11:59:58 PM » Author: Proteus
When using SON gear for North American MV lamps, remember to remove or deactivate the ignitor otherwise you’ll ruin the starting resistor and the starting probe will be useless. That will happen on a hot restike event, that is sure to become reality if you plan on regular use.

Clear MV looks quite good lighting leafy trees in the summer. Hope you’re able to enjoy this project for many years.

Thanks for your advice. It is absolutely clear to not use ignitirs for MV lamps. Just will use a series choke and that‘s it.
Our mercury lamps are working exactly in the same way, there‘s a starting probe with a resistor, so no need of an ignitor.

I just used ignitors sometimes in mercury lamps which are very very worn out and which don‘t want to strike anymore from themselves, like for example one of my Philips HPL-N 700W with completely blackened arctube and light output of a 125W MV. This way you can force them back to life.
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Re: American mercury lamps on European gear « Reply #9 on: December 17, 2018, 03:38:28 AM » Author: HomeBrewLamps
@Max.

Hey whats the specs for 80W mercury vapor out of curiosity? And what gear could be used to run them on American 120V 60Hz?
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Re: American mercury lamps on European gear « Reply #10 on: December 17, 2018, 07:35:16 AM » Author: Medved
@Max.

Hey whats the specs for 80W mercury vapor out of curiosity? And what gear could be used to run them on American 120V 60Hz?

0.8A at 110V across the arc, 200V+ OCV.

It should be something transformer based meeting the OCV requirements. So 2x F40 identical (magnetic; F40 are rated 0.43A/100V arc) ballasts in parallel, it will be very slightly overdriven, but still within the tolerance.

75W MV ballast will underdrive it a bit, but dunno if the lower arc voltage than the 75W ballast is designed for may harm the ballast or not.

And of course the genuine 80W ballast, but that may be hard to find as even when "known" to the standards, this lamp was never used that much in America.
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Re: American mercury lamps on European gear « Reply #11 on: March 24, 2019, 09:27:02 PM » Author: lights*plus
Why are you people trying to run mercury-vapour lamps with anything other than mercury-vapour ballast gear? What are you trying to achieve?
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HomeBrewLamps
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Re: American mercury lamps on European gear « Reply #12 on: March 24, 2019, 10:10:08 PM » Author: HomeBrewLamps
Why are you people trying to run mercury-vapour lamps with anything other than mercury-vapour ballast gear? What are you trying to achieve?

You do realize that European gear is different from American gear, their HPS and MV lamps are sometimes if not all the time interchangable. Also as Proteus was asking, he wanted to run American clear lamps on his home turf because clear lamps are rare across the pond. They don't have regular 175W,100W, 75W and 50W gear and probably don't want to have to use a separate step down transformer to run their lamps.
------—--------------------

@Max, Medved or Funky Bulb..

How would I go about running a European 125W lamp on American mains?
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Re: American mercury lamps on European gear « Reply #13 on: March 24, 2019, 10:51:47 PM » Author: lights*plus
This thread has got me thoroughly confused,(remember I'm not a lighting expert). What is the difference between a European H38 mercury lamp and an American H38 mercury lamp clear or coated? Or an H44 versus H44 lamp for that matter??
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Medved
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Re: American mercury lamps on European gear « Reply #14 on: March 25, 2019, 05:11:19 AM » Author: Medved
This thread has got me thoroughly confused,(remember I'm not a lighting expert). What is the difference between a European H38 mercury lamp and an American H38 mercury lamp clear or coated? Or an H44 versus H44 lamp for that matter??

The ANSI rating is not used in Europe, so technically no H38 exist there at all...

But otherwise the MV lamps of same wattages have the same specs on both sides (all MVs are designed around 220V OCV induvtive ballast characteristics, so arc voltages start from 95V of a 50W, till 140V of the 400W), just to make the lamps compatible world wide (230V mains allows way more efficient and simpler series inductor as a ballast, if the lamp arc voltage is around half that mains so around 100V, while the 100V is not that far from the optimum, so lamps were made that way).
Just only few wattages reached wider spread in Europe (50, 80, 125, 250 and 400).

HPS are a different story, there the lamps are very (arc tube) temperature sensitive, so need more extensive match between lamp and ballast characteristics, not only in the OCV and nominal point to be stable.
 Because the side effect benefot of a CWA (the suppression of mains fluctuation) was widely exploited in many US installations, there was a need to make the lamps sothey are stable on this gear.
On the other hand the series reactor common in Europe is rather limited in OCV, so needs lamps made more robust in that way.
These differences mean it was not possible to design a single lamp suitable for both gear type, so it made no sense to stick to common nominal arc voltage ratings.
Because the CWA cost the same and has the same losses regardless of the designed arc voltage, the US lamp arc voltages were set to really reach the maximum efficacy (except the low wattages, where the optimum was not that far away from 55V, so it became beneficial to design them with 55V arc for a simple series reactor), so that is why each wattage has so different nominal arc voltage.
The series choke ballast in Europe just yields all arc voltages in the 70..110V range.
So the US and European HPS lamps became very different, so you need to design the ballast from scratch when moving some lamp across the pond.
The US guys have the task a bit simpler, because of the pulse start MH gear is to big extend compatible with some EU HPS (50..250W range)

The probe MH were originally designed to run on an MV gear (that would make the US vs EU compatible), but it soon popped out the 220V OCV was not enough. That means the US ballasts had to be redesigned for higher OCV (no problem for MVs, just a bit higher ballast losses) and was practically a show stopper for this concept in Europe.

European answer for the OCV problems was to lower the arc voltage a bit (except 400W) so the 230 OCV suffices and move to a pulse start concept. Because the HPS were already pulse start and a bit lower arc voltage, these MHs were designed along the existing HPS ballasts.
That set a rating standard which became usable in the 120V area as well, so these tend to be the same.

Now how to match lamp vs ballast if they are not rated so? Following is
You have to look to basic properties:
Does the lamp needs a HV ignition pulse? Easy to adapt - disconnect/add an ignitor (to add, you need to find a superimposed type, which does not need any tap on the ballast)
What is the rated arc current? What deviation the lamp allows?
What is the required OCV? These last two are the crucial, but you may combine components to get what you need (e.g. connecting different fluorescent chokes in parallel to get the arc current).
Is there a restriction on the ballast output V-A loading characteristics? (Mainly important for saturated vapor lamps to make the setup stable and tolerant to parameter variations)

That means you may find already a few compatible combinations:
- 100W MV runs OK on a 70W pulse MH with ignitor deactivated
- 175W MV on 150W pulse MH or S56 HPS, again deactivated ignitor
- S56 HPS will run on 150W pulse MH
- 150W pulse MH may run on S56, may be less reliable to start; would need higher voltage ignitor
- 80W MV on 50W pulse MH deactivated ignitor
- 80W MV on two same phase F40 ballast outputs in parallel
And by going through different ballast characteristics you may find many more.

Anyway, these combinations are technically not using a matching ballasts, but designing the ballast from other components. That implies many of the certificates on the existing ballasts are void, so the contraption may become not compliant with the code because of the missing certificates.

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