I’m curious on how long a 3000 lumen emergency ballast would last for. I believe that the more initial lumens means more emergency mode time? I’m just trying have one that last for more than 8 hours. Thank u!

The lumens and operating time all come down to the capacity of the battery used. Higher battery capacity allows for longer operating time. Alternatively, the manufacturer can make the inverter more powerful, to trade the long time for higher initial light output

The limits on battery capacity you can connect to an EM inverter ballast come from its thermal design. They are not very efficient, and they do heat up as they are working. The design expects that the battery is not very big and it will go flat before the inverter overheats

For 8 hours i think you would be better off with powering a standard HF ballast from an external inverter which is actually designed to work without time limits and a battery of whatever capacity you want

3000lm sounds to me as rather high output, so with that I would rather go for a dedicated battery powered light fixture than just the typical emergency strap-on solution.
We are talking about 30..50W from the battery (maybe with LEDs you may go as low as 25W or so), so when operating for 8 hours, it means about 30..40Ah 12V battery, so not something to be just "hanging from the ceiling".

The question is, what you really need: 3000lm sounds to me like way too much for a single light source of any emergency application...
Because high lumens does not mean long time.
These parameters are completely not related to each other (except their product translates into the required battery size), need for higher output means something completely different than the need for long stand alone burn time.

Hey guys so sorry I’m just getting back to you. Sometimes lighting gallery doesn’t let me know that I have new notifications. But i got the 3000l Emergency ballast without referring back to you guys and yea you guys were so right. (Sorry im just getting into this stuff) I let it charge for 24hrs before conducting a full discharge test and the emergency ballast supplied full lumen output at first but totally died in less than 2 hours and 15 mins of emergency mode. I have a Cooper emergency ballast that was really cheap and lasted way longer than that (3:54mins) as well as a keystone Emergency ballast 500/b that lasted almost 6 hours in emergency mode. (The Cooper and keystone were 500 lumen) the ballast that I got was a BAL3000 but after ordering I realized that is kind of not a good company I guess. But I have a keystone instant start ballast that lasted long with the keystone emergency ballast. Do these products purposely work well together? Sorry if none of this makes sense. Thanks for you help again as well. And if you guys have any recommendations on good long lasting emergency ballast please let me know.

I believe most building codes require only 30-60 minutes of operation, enough to safely evacuate and close the building. Manufacturers have little incentive to make units that last longer than that. Using supplementary batteries is almost the only way to go, but adds quite a bit of bulk to the setup.

The codes require varying minimum burn timer depends on the building and room category and its evacuation possibilities. Generally it is just to get people out.
Most common are 15 minutes till 1 hour, longer requirements are then usually served by custom setups (using ballast and battery as separate components, combined according to the actual need).
The burn time is not whether the ballast is "better" or "worse", but for what application it is designed for.
The 3000lm one seems to be for about 1 hour, the 500lm ones for 2 hour requirement (usually makers design for double to what minimum the intended category needs, to count for some battery and lamp wear; lamp wear, because a worn lamp tend to cause larger current consumption of tge emergency inverter).
I dont think it depends on the main ballast at all, as that gets disconnected by a relay once the emergency one kicks in.

Ok, and I’m just kind of doing this sort of experimentally (not rly for a building purpose) Back In April we had a storm that knocked out power to my middle school. No one was in the school of course because of the pandemic, but usually I bike by the school sometimes and I went to go check the hall around 3pm and the emergency lights were all on in the hall.(as well as exit signs) Then I came back around 7:50pm and all the emergency lights were extremely dim. I believe the power went out around 9am or 12pm one of those 2. (I believe it was 9am) So yea I think they would have to have a setup. The hallway that I check was the 6th grade hall. Keep in mind this was an addition to the building in the early 2000s due to overpopulation. I checked on the 7/8 hall (older part of the building) around maybe past 12:30 totally forgetting to check the 6th grade one. But the emergency lights were on and working pretty good, but then I came back at 3 and check the old part of the building again and they were all dead. (6th grade still on) So I think they decided to go a little all out on the 6th grade hall when they added on to the building. But I believe that the interior classrooms just have emergency ballast instead of a whole setup like the older part of the building. I will be inserting photos, in order to show you what I mean. (6th grade hall photos) sorry for all the reading lol

I think for 8 hours runtime you're gonna have a hard time finding such a product as since typical code requires 30-90min emergency lighting so manufacturers tend to make their products for that run time. A 8 hour 3000 lumen emergency ballast would also be quite big and won't be able to fit inside the fixture like a 90 minute one.

Usually for long runtimes like that, places would either install a central system emergency power supply so either a large battery bank installed remotely in a electrical closet or the more likely scenario, a diesel or natural gas fired stand by generator. A long runtime for facilities equipped with a generator isn't really needed as you only have to bridge the gap between the power going out and the time it takes for the generator to kick in. 

To me the 8 hour is not much an emergency, but dual power light. So unlike emergency, it has to use proper ballast, treating the lamp in a way to not wear out within a short time.
Plus wit the 3000lm we are talking about a car battery size to feed it.
So a battery wont be inside of the fixture anymore (unless it is something along a free standing lamp with the battery in its base).
So a proper 12V ballast and a switching box, plus separate battery in some reasonable place (for its size and weight).

I'd like to mention here some things i seen over here (Israel)

The common EM inverters here (used with a 36W T8) feed it with ~6W (they are rated to 480 Lm output), and run on a 4 cell 1.2Ah NiCd or 2.0Ah NiMH battery, for approx 30/60 min run time. They are commonly built into 2x36W Fluorescent luminaires like Gaash 1600's, and wired to one of the lamps. (with a change over relay to run both lamps on the standard magentic gear when normal line power is present)



The Western Wall Tunnels in Jerusalem are part of the city that's been buried underground during the Mamluk occupation in the 13th century. (They built a platform to have level new city landscape, and the complete city landscape that's been there before, houses and everything, had been buried underground with support pillars standing to support the platform above). The site had been researched by archeologists for the last 2 centuries or so. The researches are still continuing and the place had been opened for visitors since the 1990s (with new rooms added to the visitor accessible area every few years). The visitor areas start at ~20m below the outside ground level

Back in the mid 00s (when i was visiting there) was lit mostly with CMH and PL, with few FL's inbetween. I spotted also sections of simple dangling GLS's original from the archeologist's lighting setup (before the visitor access renovations), disconnected and derelict in some places

One of the chambers to which several tunnels concentrate, and from which there is a corridor to stairs going up, has IIRC a 2x36W Gaash 5054 installed in the ceiling. It wasn't switched on at the time (the room was lit by CMH uplighters at the walls). It had 2 red LEDs (charging indicators of EM modules) on its side, which means (i think) that in emergency it runs both lamps (using 2 EM ballasts). I dont know what the battery capacity is. Such version had never been offered by Gaash in the "Standard" offerings



I have in collection a few Gaash 1600's (2x36W T8) that came from some other "catacombs" - In this case a deep underground parking lot under a mall in Tsfat, that's been constructed in the early 90s. (The mall is quite a monstrosity of a building in its own right). In them, there is 1 EM ballast in the luminaire, but instead of the 1 battery pack, it has 2 identical battery packs connected in parallel, to double the run time. (It might in fact more than double the time due to battery discharge characteristics, and also have some effect on lamp brightness as the voltage drop on the battery internal resistance is lowered)

I dont think the inverters (1865's) had been really designed to handle such capacity, but i got the luminaires in ~2014 and the inverters dont have any signs of damage, yet i bet they seen their share of power outages