[Iron Crab]

IceCap ballast are suppose to be energy saving and I was wondering if anyone has confirmed this. There is suppose to be a 40% savings on line current. So if I'm running 540w in bulbs I should only be using about 336w. Is this true? Bill

[Rin]

Ballasts invaribly use more wattage than their rating. Electronic ballasts are just a little closer to the true rating than those magnetic and wire loop style ballasts. Hence, the reason they say you save energy when using e-ballasts.

What the ballast draws and what the bulbs draw are different numbers. I'm not up on all the particulars, though. I would say that if you are using a 660, then you are drawing 660 watts, no matter how many bulbs are connected.

HTH

[PerryinCA]

Rin is right, and not. The MH ballasts this hold true. In fact they use around the same amount of light as the Standard ballast, but have more output.

With the Flourescent ballast(Icecap 660), 440 VHO output only consumes around 285 watts. This is achieved by the high frequency transformer the Icecap electronic ballast uses. It's not a conventional method of lighting, and excites the electrons(which fall back to n=1 to create shooting photons called 'light') differently.


For most ballasts, they actually consume more watts than the lights are using, do to the fact that energy conversion can neer be 100% efficient, some is lost to heat...some just lost .

-Perry

[Ltspd]

Would not a Amp probe tell you? Its not measuring watts but actual amp draw while running which translates mathmaticely to watts.

[Iron Crab]

Sorry, but I think I'm lost here. At the moment I have two 660's each running two 140w 5 foot bulbs and I'm trying to figure if it would pay to add another bulb to one of the ballasts. I was thinking of capping my lighting at around 600 watts but if the IceCap ballasts are saving me by using less wattage than what the bulbs are rated for I can add another 140w and still be under the 600w cap. Does this make sense or am I wrong in my thinking. I think I remember a post somewhere where it stated that a 110w VHO bulb using an IC ballast consumed 85w of power. Bill

[Rin]

Oops, my bad. I forgot we were talking about fluorescent not MHs.

I think I remember that the IC660 can support 16' of VHO bulb. You should be OK adding another 5' bulb.

The max draw of the ballast is 4.4 A. (Quoted from their web site @ http://www.icecapinc.com/ )

[ASH]

From IceCap:
Despite the light output you get, with 4 X 110-watt VHO lamps you only consume 285-watts. The 4.4 Amps is a start-up maximum number only. We use high frequency and a ballast that uses very little energy to accomplish this. It also helps increase the lamp's life.
Andy

[Iron Crab]

OK, I understand that using 4 X 110w lamps will use 285w. What I don't get is - How many watts do you use with 2 X 140w lamps? I was figuring 2 X 140w = 280w. Are you saying that 3 X 140w will max out to less than 285w or do you need to use the 4 X 110w system to realize the maxium savings? Hope I'm making sense here. Bill

[ASH]

From IceCap:
"How many watts do you use with 2 X 140w lamps?"
About 180 watts total.

"I was figuring 2 X 140w = 280w. Are you saying that 3 X 140w will max out to less than 285w"
Yes.

Andy

[Iron Crab]

Just wanted to say thanks to all that helped out on my thread. I have a lot better understanding of my lighting system now. Special thanks to IceCap. I have mounted my lamps but haven't powered them up yet and will consider that 5th lamp. thanks again, Bill