Shop lighting: magnetic or electronic ballasts?

I switched my shop to electronic ballasts because of the cold start problem. Many electronic ballasts will start even at 0 degrees Fahrenheit. My old super cheap shop lights that came with the house would flicker for ten minutes until they warmed up. Oh, and they eat bulbs too.

Not all electronic ballasts are silent. I have some that hum a little bit. I've taken to buying fixtures with magnetic ballasts and immediately replacing them with electronic ballasts of my choice in order to get something well behaved. A decent electronic ballast can be had for $15 or so. The pins on T12s and T8s are exactly the same, so you can retrofit magnetic ballast fixtures with electronic ballasts. (Maybe if your fixture has starters you'd have trouble.) Another thing to be aware of with electronic ballasts is that you can get special high output ones that give more light from the same bulbs, and also special low output ones that save you energy and give you less light from the same bulbs.

Regarding color quality, there are two factors to be aware of when you buy bulbs. One is the color temperature. If you get 3000 K bulbs you will have yellow light, like you get from an incandescent. If you get

Regarding light quality you need to look at the color rendering index or CRI. This indicates whether the light is of good quality. Somehow CRI measures how well the spectrum is filled out. (I have never found a satisfactory explanation of what EXACTLY it means.) Incandescent lights have a CRI of 100 which is the best possible.

The quality of the light has no intrinsic connection to whether you are using T8's, T12's, T5's or anything else about the shape of the bulb. They can make bulbs in any shape to have whatever light characteristics they want. It does appear that not much is available in T12s. I use T8s that have a CRI of 86 which seems to be adequate. I believe that T5's might be more efficient than T8's, but probably not enough that you'd really see the difference in your electric bill. (The jump from magnetic ballasts running two T12's at 80 W to an electronic ballast that gives the same light running two T8's at 54 W is much bigger.)

If you experience radio interference you might try switching to a different brand or even just a different model of electronic ballast. Electronic ballasts operate at much higher frequencies than the old magnetic ones which is why they don't flicker or hum. If they happen to be leaking at the frequency of your radio station you can get interference. Advance makes a ballast called PowrKut that is specifically designed not to generate radio interference.

The more for less is a consideration, too... not so much now, but within a year or so, I hope to move the shop to Baja, and power conservation will be much more important..

mac

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Very informative post -- thanks for the info. Helps with shop lighting...

Lot of good info in the post

Actually if it is like some of the places I have lived and worked there ... having any power is a greater consideration.

Reliable power is of course a significant issue there as well. Just make sure you have a UPS for your computer system...

yeah, we have a good ups on our 2 main computers and those will go with us.. The way they're progressing in the area that we're building, the power will be in before we start the first house.. The economy part comes in with the pricing of the electricity... since the government controls the power, it's priced so that the Mexican people can afford it, about 2 1/2 cents a kilowatt... OTOH, after a fairly small amount of kilowatts, (the amount a middle class Mexican family would use), the price goes WAY up.... For most of the folks we've talked to that have lived thee a while, they seldom hit the higher rate, but none of them have a shop, either..

mac

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mac davis wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

At the risk of sending this thread completely down the toilet...

Has anyone investigated what it would take to run a shop off-grid? Say with photovoltaic or similar? (No waterwheels or human powered pitsaws considered, please.)

Patriarch

Photovoltaic is way too expensive and inefficient to run a shop. To get off grid you would need to look at wind power, hydro (waterwheel or generator) or steam or internal combustion motor generator. Depending on the area steam may have the best potential since you could use just about anything for fuel.

-- "We need to make a sacrifice to the gods, find me a young virgin... oh, and bring something to kill"

Tim Douglass

However unless you have a geothermal source steam's also likely to be the most expensive--either up front for a high pressure boiler and turbine or life-cycle in fuel costs for a low-efficiency low-pressure system.

I have done some investigation for the upper midwest part of the USA (Minnesota and Iowa). Wind and thermal solar (concentrating reflectors either directly powering stirling cycle engines which turn generators or producing steam) appear to be the best choices at this time. AFAICT, PV panels and fuel cells don't appear to be good choices at the current state of art.

A lot depends on the shop. Not much is needed for a neander-hobby operation other than enough power for some lighting and a fractional horsepower motor. Obviously you'll need more to run a

About half of the heat for my 50'x50' shop is provided by a single 6'x12' solar heating panel. I've determined that two more such panels would be adequate to keep the shop warm enough to be comfortable working in Levis and t-shirt on moderately sunny winter days.

My personal approach has been to do what's possible with the resources at hand and to keep alert for ways to improve on what I have. The general commercial context appears to be that the players with anything worthwhile to offer want to take huge profits at the front end - which makes their technology/products unaffordable to most of us until their patents run out and the Pacific Rim producers take over...

i doubt very much that this would be practical... Harping on the Baja thing again, the 1st tract of homes on our "rancho" were in a designated solar area... meaning that they would never get power.. Everyone thought that this would be very cool in Baja but the folks can't sell their homes now (some only 1 or 2 years old) for near what they paid to build them.. After $10,000 US for a solar system, the generator kicks in if you run the microwave or a large hair dryer, so I can't see running any kind of power tool off them..

mac

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