Running mains fluorescents from inverter

[The Other Mike]

Currently got a remote observation site (wildlife) with no grid fed power nor any prospect of it.

Half the site has a few modified 4ft T5's (36W) retrofitted with 12v IOTA Ballasts (2D12-1-32) fed from a lead acid battery charged by a solar panel. The other half of the site has 5ft T5's with magnetic ballasts fed by a Honda EU20i generator which despite being a quiet suitcase model and loads of additional soundproofing is still way too noisy. Near silent operation is essential. Hauling fuel is also a PITA as its a long way from the road.

So I need a way of powering the 5ft T5's (58W) from a low voltage DC supply. IOTA only make ballasts up to 40W and they need a circa 50v supply, realistically I need to keep to 12v to keep the solar array price down.

So thoughts turned to an inverter fed from an uprated solar array and battery.

A cheap modified sine wave inverter (circa 500W capacity) on a 100Ah brand new battery fails to even kick even one 5ft tube into life. The manufacturer says these inverters are not compatible with fluorescent tubes but doesn't elaborate any further.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to get these lights working off grid?

A change of ballast to an electronic type? (all indications are this could won't work?)

Moving to a pure sine wave inverter (extremely expensive) ?

A different inverter supplier rather than 'one hung lo china inc' ?'

A ballast supplier that offers 12v ballasts that will drive a 58W tube?

A homebrew 12V fluorescent inverter, running at high frequency that will drive 5ft tubes and costs not a lot? :)

[Gazz]

prolly cheapest and easiest to change the 5 foot fittings to 4 footers with the 12 volt ballasts you know work.

you'll need a pure sine wave inverter to run a ferromagnetic ballast, bit of a waste of money just to run a few lights, if you wanted to run laser printers, charge electric toothbrushes etc at the site, then it may be worthwhile.

[Mho]

Did you try rubbing the tubes to get them started, especially with a static generating material like nylon or wool?

----------

Currently got a remote observation site (wildlife) with no grid fed power nor any prospect of it.

Half the site has a few modified 4ft T5's (36W) retrofitted with 12v IOTA Ballasts (2D12-1-32) fed from a lead acid battery charged by a solar panel. The other half of the site has 5ft T5's with magnetic ballasts fed by a Honda EU20i generator which despite being a quiet suitcase model and loads of additional soundproofing is still way too noisy. Near silent operation is essential. Hauling fuel is also a PITA as its a long way from the road.

So I need a way of powering the 5ft T5's (58W) from a low voltage DC supply. IOTA only make ballasts up to 40W and they need a circa 50v supply, realistically I need to keep to 12v to keep the solar array price down.

So thoughts turned to an inverter fed from an uprated solar array and battery.

A cheap modified sine wave inverter (circa 500W capacity) on a 100Ah brand new battery fails to even kick even one 5ft tube into life. The manufacturer says these inverters are not compatible with fluorescent tubes but doesn't elaborate any further.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to get these lights working off grid?

A change of ballast to an electronic type? (all indications are this could won't work?)

Moving to a pure sine wave inverter (extremely expensive) ?

A different inverter supplier rather than 'one hung lo china inc' ?'

A ballast supplier that offers 12v ballasts that will drive a 58W tube?

A homebrew 12V fluorescent inverter, running at high frequency that will drive 5ft tubes and costs not a lot? :)

[vaughn]

But what about swapping to a newer electronic ballast? I would expect them to have a pulse-mode input which should even work off a cheap square wave inverter. (But I haven't tried) Besides, they are more efficient.

Anyhow, thanks to this thread, I now know how to find 12 volt ballasts without breaking the bank.

Thanks! Vaughn

[news]

Since you appear to be in the UK, the first product source below won't be much help, but the concept might be an alternative.

Do you need fluorescent tubes or would LED bulbs be a more efficient choice for solar powered illumination?

The local home/garden center has 120 volt 7.5 watt LED bulbs (lumens equivalent to 40 watt incandescent) for $10US each. These bulbs work with a dimmer, so they are not picky about the power source.

Two of these LED bulbs should provide more light than a 5 foot fluorescent tube plus provides power savings.

12 volt LED and CFL bulbs are available, but they are usually at premium prces:

[F Murtz]

Try this, and oatleyelectronics have lots more goodies.

[Tabby]

I think you'd benefit greatly from zooming out for a rethink. You'er asking for low voltage panels to charge a 12v battery, which will then get upconverted to 240v which must be done the expensive sine way, which will then be downconverted to 35v to run the tubes. Its madness. Far more practical wuold be warm white LEDs that will run off 12v via a resistor or constant current regulator. Take a look at rapidonline.co.uk, if you can wade through the long list of led options you'll find some very satisfactory deals there. No need for a

240v invertor anywhere, or problematic ballasts, no compatibility issues, and LEDs are far longer lived, far more robust and much more versatile than fl tubes, and trivial to dim to save power.

NT

[Owain]

Night vision glasses?

Or do lots of people have to be able to see? Night vision CCTV camera and a monitor?

Owain

[Andrew Gabriel]

They also have power factor correction inputs (usually achieving 0.95 - 0.98) and these might not like square wave. Many nowadays are rated 50-60Hz or DC, and the DC voltage can be lower than mains in many cases, 180V is not uncommon, and I have one here which says 160V.

One thing you do have to be careful about when running off batteries is not to allow the ballasts to run below their minimum rated voltages, as that causes excessive current in the transformer primary, and quick burnout. Some of the better ones include protection circuitry to switch-off below the min rated voltage.

[The Other Mike]

So presumably I could rectify and smooth and regulate the near sine wave inverter output of circa 340v pp within the lamp housing and feed an electronic ballast with say 200v?

Any indication of suitable makes and models?

[The Other Mike]

I can't see the economics working, yes its wasteful with multiple stages of conversion but the fluorescents are already there, also LED's seem way more expensive because of the number of light sources required.

Dimming isn't a requirement. Its for work lighting as its a near windowless building, the requirement is for an even spread of light such as provided by a fluorescent tube (operating microscopes and laptops in the same room is very common occurrence)

T5 fluorescents are somewhere around 70-100 lumens per watt. Most LED's at appear to be much lower efficiency with a holey spectrum and providing a very directional light source. but I'll ignore those deficiencies for now.

Currently there are I guess somewhere around 17000 lumens lighting an area of about 20 x 8ft so make that around 1000 lux, but we might get away with a little bit less.

At about the typical "90 lumens" per white LED package that would require about 180 separate light sources costing anything from GBP 2 -

4 a piece. All requiring heatsinking and being around 1/3 the efficiency of the fluorescents, almost certainly requiring a bigger solar array and a bigger battery.

So before those LED's are mounted and wired that's GBP 500 - 700 for the equivalent of the fluorescents that are already in situ which cost significantly less than a 10th of that.

GBP 500-700 buys a very nice pure sine inverter.

[The Other Mike]

Two?

Really?

USD 10?

I thought this was the only one worth bothering with?

lumens output

USD 50 a piece

To give me 17000 lumens equivalent (100 lumens /watt * 58W * 3 fittings) that requires 37 lamps costing USD1800

Giving a total load of more than 300W compared to circa 170W

You might be able to see why I keep coming back to conventional fluorecents every time :)

[chrisj.doran%proemail.co.uk]

Not cheap, but would these kits, designed to turn an ordinary fluorescent into an emergency light, do the trick?

[The Other Mike]

The IOTA ones are a bit crude (check the wiring layout!) They don't like cold temperatures and light output is also down quite a bit.

[The Other Mike]

not ideal for external DC supplies as their heatsinking isn't up to the job. The supplied battery packs have a limited run time 0of a couple of hours and this isn't enough to 'break' them.

A bit like a computer UPS. Rated at say 1000VA for 10 minutes to get though short breaks in supply or to enable an orderly shutdown but no good for long term use 'on battery' Feed them from an external battery with a higher capacity and they can go into meltdown without extensive cooling modifications.

[Dave Liquorice]

LED lighting is evolving very quickly, you can get strips these days with LEDs mounted every few inches, rather individual "bulbs".

I wouldn't like to say how their efficiency compares to florry though...

Or there are GU10 LED or R50 sized reflectors that only take a watt or two at mains voltages. The aldli/lidl 3W Warm White 3000K LED R50 ES "reflector" I got to try is a pretty close match to a 60W R50 ES tungsten. "Livarno EdiLight".

Directional of course not spray light everywhere like a florry.

[Tabby]

Rapid do white LEDs for =A31.50 per 100 lumens, 17000l in whites =3D =A3255= . Colours are cheaper, except blue which you wont need, there's plenty of that from the white LEDs. Spectrum is addressed by mixing white LEDs with coloured ones to create the white you're after. Directionality is a nonissue with uplighting. Ali sheet's not expensive

If yuo'd rather go with the T5s, you either need a sine wave invertor or some electronic ballasts. Those and HID are the options really.

NT

[Don Klipstein]

I would replace the 5-footers with 4-footers. More 4-footers are made than all other sizes of fluoros combined. Going with the flow will greatly improve your ballast choices.

[Victor Roberts]

I agree with Andrew about DC input. Most electronic ballasts will work rather well on DC input power, and many ballast manufacturers even rate then for DC input. So, you can either recondigure your battery pack for high DC voltage (which I understand you do not want to do); or try the electronic ballasts on the square wave output, which they may like just fine; or rectify the square wave output to produce DC and feed the ballasts with that.

Vic Roberts

Rogues Gallery reply via e-mail: replace xyz with vdr in the Reply to: address or use e-mail address listed at the Web site.

This information is provided for educational purposes only. It may not be used in any publication or posted on any Web site without written permission.

[Victor Roberts]

Check Universal Lighting Technologies.

Vic Roberts

Rogues Gallery reply via e-mail: replace xyz with vdr in the Reply to: address or use e-mail address listed at the Web site.

This information is provided for educational purposes only. It may not be used in any publication or posted on any Web site without written permission.