Light and Bright

Will core-and-coil lighting ballasts be a thing of the past in the not-too-distant future? Experts at Advance Transformer in Rosemont, Ill., and lighting fixture manufacturer Guth, St. Louis, Mo., seem to think so.

Guth has been shipping its ElectroLume pulse-start metal-halide lighting fixture, which employs Advance's DynaVision electronic ballast, since the beginning of the year. The system is said to be capable of delivering a 30% to 50% improvement in lumen maintenance over conventional pulse-start metal-halide or probe-start metal-halide/magnetic ballast combinations, and to maintain 86% of initial lumens after 8,000 hrs. of operation.

A 400-watt application of the system can produce up to 56% more mean lumens than conventional probe-start systems using the same wattage lamps, resulting in a lower overall fixture count without reducing light levels. Additionally, Advance says that DynaVision is the only ballast that can dim a metal-halide lamp down to 50% power.

And last but not least, it's light. A nonscientific test in Advance's Rosemont lab (lifting the ballast/fixture combination with one finger) confirmed this.