ISK
Well-Known Member
yeah...who knows, but all I know is I got a brand new bulb for free and it's working like a charm....I'm happy
bad luck with Plantmax HPS bulbs
- Thread starter ISK
- Start date
OldMedUser
Well-Known Member
There are no filaments in HID bulbs. Or CFLs, or LEDs or any other kind of bulb used to grow plants.
CriticalCheeze
Well-Known Member
Yeah i realized my mistake, and mean a possible bad arc? Surely some parts could be shit and causing issues.
OldMedUser
Well-Known Member
Eventually some gases in the arc tubes work their way through the glass until the arc can't make it across anymore but that would only happen with an older or defective bulb that maybe doesn't have a perfect seal at one of the points the electrodes pass thru the glass. Components in the ballast may be failing causing a weaker arc or pulses of higher voltage that cause premature wear on the bulb and early failure. That's more likely with digital ballasts as magnetics usually just won't fire if something fails and there's not much to fail. Both MH and HPS use a capacitor and that's the most likely culprit. HPS also has an ignitor so that's one other thing with them. My 3- 400w HPS, 1- 400W MH and 1000W MH are all 30 or so years old and I've never had a problem with any of them. I have 2 - 150W HPS as well and one of them died recently and I'm pretty sure it's the capacitor. As I rarely use either of them I won't bother fixing it. Digitals haven't been around that long but from everything I've seen they don't last near as long.
Digitals also run at about 20,000Hz which causes resonance in the bulb and leads to early failure of the bulb where magnetics run the same as line current, 60Hz and create no resonance. Digitals also give a signal on the line so if you have a smart meter it's identified as a digital HID ballast. Magnetics just show a draw relative to their wattage and as far as the power company is concerned it could be a heater or toaster that's causing the draw as it doesn't give off an identifying signal. We don't have smart meters here so all the power company knows if the total wattage I use for my whole house in a month. As long as I pay the bill they don't care what I'm using it for and there's no info for them to give the cops other than that.
Digitals really don't save any power other than a few watts. I hooked up a meter to my lights once and with 2 - 400s and a 150 they used a total of 962W or 12 watts over their rated total. I'd be really surprised if the same lights run with digital ballasts was dead on 950W and even if they were how long would it take to get back the higher price for the ballasts by saving 12W. They are a little cooler running by about half but the initial cost is 2 - 3X that of magnetics and unless you buy quality brand name ones you should buy a spare as the failure rate on cheap ones that come with kits off EBay, Amazon etc is really high as are the no-name bulbs they use.
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