120-277 volt flourscent ballast 240 volts?

[hunt4679]

Has anyone used the universal voltage ballasts 120-277v on a 240 volt system? Will they work? Doing a high bay change out and found one building is all 240 volts.

 

[CONTROL FREQ]

Has anyone used the universal voltage ballasts 120-277v on a 240 volt system? Will they work? Doing a high bay change out and found one building is all 240 volts.

Replaced 52 spun aluminum "salad bowl" high bays about 2 years ago with 4 lamp T-5's same situation, our main building had around 400 fixtures, mostly 277, but in the other building all 52 were 120 and 240V. They been working fine for us.

 

[weressl]

Has anyone used the universal voltage ballasts 120-277v on a 240 volt system? Will they work? Doing a high bay change out and found one building is all 240 volts.

Universal voltage and multi-tap ballast differ that universals are electronic ballast,not unlike your laptop power supply, that adjusts to ANY voltage within the indicated voltage range, whereas the multi-tap magnetic ballasts have a common and a separate voltage lead for each specific voltage and would be labeled: 120/206/240/277, etc.

 

[Open Neutral]

What's the cold weather performance of the universal ones like? Do they fire the lamps OK? Come up to full output any faster?

 

[infinity]

I see no reason why it would not work properly. 240 volts is in the range of the operating voltage of the ballast.

 

[broadgage]

Yes they should be fine.
I have used them on UK 240 volt supplies.
Very usefull if the voltage varies a lot, UK spec ballasts only accept from 207 volts up to 253.
USA type ballasts solved a lighting problem in a farm building, the alleged 230/240 volt supply varried from 280 volts off load to 200 volts at full load, and about 100 volts during motor starts. No UK ballast will work over that range, but 120/277 volt USA ones work fine.

 

[weressl]

What's the cold weather performance of the universal ones like? Do they fire the lamps OK? Come up to full output any faster?

The cold weather (slack/non)-performance is not coming from the ballast, but the tube itself.

 

[Open Neutral]

The cold weather (slack/non)-performance is not coming from the ballast, but the tube itself.

True, but an electronic ballast can be lots smarter than an old hummer. I'd hope that the design engineers used the opportunity to, for example, run the tube harder when cold, until it warms up. Same kind of thinking re: extreme starting temps.

(Even with ordinary CF's you can do OK. The Metro here has 100's and 100's of '100 watt' CF's on outdoors platforms. While they provide nil illumination when first started on cold mornings, they are fine after 30-60 minutes. If WMATA paid more, I bet they could do even better.)

 

[mtfallsmikey]

True, but an electronic ballast can be lots smarter than an old hummer. I'd hope that the design engineers used the opportunity to, for example, run the tube harder when cold, until it warms up. Same kind of thinking re: extreme starting temps.

(Even with ordinary CF's you can do OK. The Metro here has 100's and 100's of '100 watt' CF's on outdoors platforms. While they provide nil illumination when first started on cold mornings, they are fine after 30-60 minutes. If WMATA paid more, I bet they could do even better.)

I'm sure Metro needs the other $$ just to keep their escalators running!

 

[weressl]

True, but an electronic ballast can be lots smarter than an old hummer. I'd hope that the design engineers used the opportunity to, for example, run the tube harder when cold, until it warms up. Same kind of thinking re: extreme starting temps.

(Even with ordinary CF's you can do OK. The Metro here has 100's and 100's of '100 watt' CF's on outdoors platforms. While they provide nil illumination when first started on cold mornings, they are fine after 30-60 minutes. If WMATA paid more, I bet they could do even better.)

The electrinic ballast COULD be smarter, but not necessarily is and without component modification may not be able to accomplish the task.