Fluorescent Lighting Upgrade

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bob

bob

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Alabama
This is a question regarding upgrading the lighting in a nursing home. They have had an energy study done and one of the suggestions is to replace the existing 40 watt lamps and ballast with T-8 bulbs and electronic ballast. I checked one the the ballast MFG specs on the hi efficiency magnetic ballast and found that the losses were just a few watts. The question I have is which to recommend. The manager is a friend. It is my understanding that the electronic ballast(EB) have a high failure rate. The magnetic ballast seems to last forever. One failure of the EB would cancel any energy saving for that year. Could one make a case for using the hi-efficiency magnetic ballast based on the longer life? At this time the nursing home is replacing the lamps as they fail.
 
I'm kind of fond of GE's product line. I think a lot of problems with the electronic ballasts are that people play mix and match. GE warranties their stuff for five years. if they were that poor of performer, I would think that the word would be a lot louder on the street?

Instant starts for low switching duty. Programmed rapid starts for lots of varying duty.
 
Not anymore. Electronics are the only way to go. Do a payback analysis of his system. How many fixtures are you going to retrofit?
 
I think the universal voltage eb's have been having some problems. I've done thousands of single voltage instant start eb's and the failure rate was very very low.
 
if the magnetic ballasts are very old, I would think their failure rate would be higher than new electromagnetic ballasts.

Also, if this is an air conditioned building, the AC won't use as much energy to cool the heat produced by the electronic ballasts.

Steve
 
I think all our local area schools just retrofitted all their T12's with T8 lamps and ballasts. It's quite a bit more involved than just changing parts too. Proper lamp disposal, pcb ballast disposal, wiping down fixtures that contained the pcb ballasts, keeping records, setup, teardown, etc. It might take a little while to break even if you have to go through all that. I think our schools only did it because they had money that needed spending or they'd lose it.:roll:
 
If you ar eplanning on T8 lamps I would look into the newer lower wattage T8 lamps. They come in two flavors 25W and 28W. They can be retro-fit into a T8 lighitng system, but if ballasts are also retro-fit to a "programmed start" type ballast additional energy savings are possible. You need to be wary of the reduced lumen output (about 10% less), but older lighting designs are typically overlit so it is ussually doable without relocating fixtures. If you spend a liitle more up front an get longer life lamps you can save even more on maint. cost. You can google and find a lot more info. I've attached a case study by Phillips for a school. The case study only replaced lamps and not ballasts, but since you need to replace ballast anyway it will probably make sense to go with the programmed start ballast and lower wattage lamp.

http://sdreo.org/uploads/case_25Wlamp.pdf
 
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