The Truth About Magnetic Ballasts Power Wastage!

That was an informative read. Thanks xtrchessreal for that Advanced Technology Solutions link the Eye Hortilux docs are interesting. I like how they said in the past two years they have seen improvements on the e-ballast market and now some are running more reliably. When I get home I'm going to check my Solis Tek ballast for UL CSA stamps.
 
This gives me more confidence in my purchase. So far its been running smooth.
Here's the input labels on my Solis Tek STK-600
STK600_input_label.JPG


Here's the output label
STK600_output_label.JPG
 
The Solis-Tek STK-600 bears the Intertek Testing Services ETL mark with both the C and the US designations which means it conforms the CSA and UL Product Safety standards as well. That is a good thing to have on your digital ballast. I would feel good about that myself. With that mark you should not have to worry about a gas bulb arc tube exploding (for noobs that is the part of the bulb that actually lights up).

BTW even if it exploded the outer glass is supposed to contain the gases and you shouldn't need to evacuate the area and exhaust the gases to the outside. However if you broke the outside glass and the arc tube you should definitely exhaust the gases.

Calyx Hunter: The Bulb is driven to higher output intensity with digital ballasts which I guess is good as far as getting more photosynthesis from the plant. The sodium/mercury in the arc tube will decay faster over time due to this intensity which causes more bulb replacements over time which costs more money over time. The gist of my opinion stated above is that you lose any efficiency gained by a digital ballast/hps bulb setup because you are replacing your bulbs and your ballasts more often. So if you are in business for instance selling weed to a MMJ or Retail outlet it will cut into your profit in the form of higher cost to produce. And if you are growing for yourself why do you need to create higher costs for yourself if you are the only one using the weed? I have read about light bleaching but I wouldn't know too much about it. Perhaps that may be something to worry about with a higher intensity as well, I don't know.

I completely understand the enthusiasm to grow the best weed you can and as I stated previously if you can afford to experiment with higher cost equipment then by all means experiment and have fun.

This forum is about the truth about power wastage in a magnetic ballast - I have provided ample information refuting that. The link I provided and Eye Hortilux info shows the power factor (which is a measure of efficiency of the system) higher than that of a digital ballast. So there is energy efficiency and money efficiency in a magnetic ballast that beats the digital ballast. This is my honest opinion provided to people seeking knowledgeable opinion here.

:peace:X
 
I can see that your stance is definitely on the side of saving up front costs. I am on the further end of things by wanting to spend more to squeeze out every bit of THC and CBD from my plants as possible. This is my favorite hobby and a passion. I grow for personal use and medication. I'm not in this to make or save money. I want produce the highest quality buds anyone has ever experienced.
As I understand it the e-ballasts run at a much higher frequency than the magnetic core ballasts and this higher frequency (in quality electronic ballasts) allows for a more steady stream of energy to flow through the lamp. This produces more available light and PAR for the plants. Sure it may burn the lamp out quicker than its recommended lifesapn but I will be replacing at the earliest 9 months anyway. After reading xtrchessreal's link's I am going to go with the Solis Tek lamps next grow to keep my ballast and lamp matched better. Right now I'm running the Solis Tek STK600 with an Eye Hortilux Super HPS 600W and so far so good. It is proven that eletronic ballasts can have a better power factor and THD so therefore waste less power while running.
 
I totally understand your passion, most of us on here are trying to grow their personal best weed. :high-five:

I agree with everything in your last post except the last sentence. It has not been proven that digital ballasts in general have a better power factor. If you have that proof I would like to see it or point me to a link where that data is posted, please. This forum is about the truth about power wastage in magnetic ballasts. It is magnetic ballasts that have been long standing with a high power factor .94 to .99 generally while digital ballast power factors are generally .89 to .94.

In an electric power system, a load with a low power factor draws more current than a load with a high power factor for the same amount of useful power transferred. Because the current is increased in a low power factor load there is more wasted power in that load compared to a load with a high power factor. This means the digital ballast wastes more power than a magnetic ballast, generally.

:peace:X
 
I have found that magnetic ballasts operator very close to their stated wattage. Also guys if your ballast is in a enclosure blow a small fan over it. The fan will keep the ballast not much more than room temperature and the ballast will probably last longer than you do. I usually will open the enclosure so the air flows over the components. You just have to be careful about water.
To me the big advantage a digital ballast has is weight. But I plan on staying with magnetics.
 
I have found that magnetic ballasts operator very close to their stated wattage. Also guys if your ballast is in a enclosure blow a small fan over it. The fan will keep the ballast not much more than room temperature and the ballast will probably last longer than you do. I usually will open the enclosure so the air flows over the components. You just have to be careful about water.
To me the big advantage a digital ballast has is weight. But I plan on staying with magnetics.


Old thread, but it was still in my list of subscribed threads that contain, err, new posts (I took a little break, lol).

Good advice about using a small fan to move air over/around/through ballasts. This is, of course, applicable to electronic ballasts as well as the older magnetic core & coil type (although the electronic ones are often sealed, they also often are in metal enclosures that are finned and act as heatsinks).

It is my understanding that magnetic ballasts are (generally) less efficient than electronic ones, due to the (5% - 25%) losses - to resistance and in its magnetic core - that are inherent in the magnetic C&C design. This would tend to be true regardless of how much gross power such a ballast consumes. Unless one has a way to measure both the amount of electricity that is consumed and the amount of electricity that actually reaches the mogul socket that the light bulb is screwed into, it would be rather difficult to quantify the exact amount of loss on a case-by-case basis.

Like everyone who has used HID lighting for more than a few years, I have used magnetic ballasts. The ones that I had which were of decent quality were, well, the term "bulletproof" is oft used, even overused these days, but they were pretty tough, lol. They're pretty easy to rebuild when one realizes that they've been in near-constant use for years and begins to fear that the components have degraded due to age. And, as I didn't move mine around after I settled on a location for the, I wasn't overly concerned about how much they weighed (which could be, relatively speaking, substantial ;) ).

But I sort of like electronic ballasts more than I do the old type. Electronic ballasts are as near as makes no difference to being silent (in relation to the magnetic type) unless they are equipped with a cooling fan. Even the magnetic ones that I have had that were of high quality and didn't start to "rattle" over time due to the transformer delaminating still always seemed to huuuuuuum the entire time that they were powered up. I could swap between HPS and MH bulbs and my electronic ballasts wouldn't care. The ones that I used were also adjustable (aka "dimmable"), so - for example - I could run a 400-watt metal halide bulb in a 400-watt ballast, but I could also dim it to 250 watts... or I could switch it to the 250-watt setting and install a 250-watt metal halide (or high pressure sodium) bulb. Therefore, I would say that electronic ballasts get the win in terms of versatility (in addition to the one for efficiency).

I'd probably still give magnetic ballasts the nod for durability - I once dropped one down the basement steps and it survived. I'm not at all sure that an electronic one would have (and, since they're often sealed, with the components set into epoxy, an electronic one would likely be more difficult for the user to repair). Still and all, I'd rather have a high-quality electronic ballast than a high-quality magnetic one.
 
Didn't see anyone talk about the frequency being used to track your equipment. Even great electronic units have a readable band. Led units also give out a beacon to thieves and the police. Very few digital units can't be found. So far I have found par is lower with a magnetic unit but worth the privacy and the lack of issues with Ham radio operators. I dont like problems so I would rather use more magnetic systems and keep privacy.

On that privacy note. Alot, I mean alot of growers sit and talk with their phones right next to them. Drives me crazy. Then there is the talking in the fert shop. I am blown away how much people dont think. No matter how legal remember your phone is a leash used extensively by the police and it can never help to be broadcasting, even if you are innocent (
) . Digital ballasts give off a beacon letting anyone who wants to know exactly where your grow is.
 
I don't want to send you diving under a rock or anything, lol, but the average core & coil (aka "magnetic") ballast produces a few birdies, too. One can usually detect then with a (radio) scanner or frequency counter that covers the RF spectrum more or less continuously between 25 mHz and 1.3 gHz.

It's quite uncommon (pretty much unheard of, actually) for a LEO in the US to drive around whilst searching the airwaves, lol. But I cannot speak for other countries' LEOs.

What happens in the US is that - IF an electrical device causes noticeable (IOW, substantial) interference on a neighbor's television, radio, telephone, et cetera, then the person complains to the FCC, their cable (TV) company, etc. and then that entity comes looking. If/when the offending device is located, someone attempts to contact the resident in order to make them aware of the person and have them deal with it.

Also, most cable TV companies send someone around "occasionally" in an attempt to catch signal thieves, and this might involve using a frequency counter. However, this kind of thing can range in frequency from once a year or two all the way down to almost never.
 
That's it! I'm done. :snowboating:

Recently in B.C Canada the RCMP have been using flir. Then they hang out in your hood to see how stupid the person may be. The person may be dealing right out of their home, or not. If the activity is low then they follow the person. Nothing there and they might knock and talk. I have been testing local ballasts from the local shops and many of them are much worse than you might imagine. Mostly ham radio and poor equipment that is the issue. Burnaby BC has a agreement with Ham radio groups to help find large grows. Canada did not make very much on legal weed and B.C gave up the least. So in BC Canada the police are getting forced/asked to try and kill the black market. Funny part is recently the feds caught legal producers breaking rules to meet demand and they not only fined them but burned the tons and tones of legal weed. Our prime minister is a massive tool. Makes Trump look like a rocket scientist.

So in my neck of the woods its getting extra stupid. Crappy digital ballasts light up the neighborhood. Magnetic's need you to get much closer, especially if its in a shielded area. My 315's are no problem at all and funny enough the De 's are not a big deal. I set up a dimable 1000w with filters and ran it at 600 with zero "birdies". I am having fun with the doom and gloom but often the core and coils are just easier.

Directly from a police officer: "How legal growers can help the police not harass legal growers." Don't be stupid and pump hot air all over your yard, dont run crappy digital ballasts or leds, Don't let all your friends grow at your house and claim the grow belongs to other people, and most important keep the smell down.

Unfortunately in Canada its not really legal as much as its now a great way for the police to generate fines.
 
Power factor
Watts
Re-ignite time Bulbs
Electronics
Magnetic
Lumens
life span of ballast magnetic versus electronic
Power grid and RFI & EMI

How about some Electrical Engineering information?

Power Factor PF is simply the output energy divided by the input energy. If you remember science Energy must be conserved, its a Physical law of the universe that means, initial energy must equal final energy. In Electricity there is always losses due to heat regardless of temperature of the component. Thus input energy is always higher than output energy and when calculating power factor Output over input (O/I < 1) That is Output divided by Input is less than 1, in every case. It is a fact that can be proven in lab and real life conditions. There is no such thing as 100% efficiency in any thing. You would be lucky to get 95% using the highest quality materials in an extremely well designed circuit.

Watts input versus output, you pay for your input watts not the output for anything that runs on electricity. PF has to do with what you get for the watts you pay for.

Ignite or Re-ignite Time is the time it takes gases designed into the bulb to get to their stable state (which is a never completely stable as the gas begins to break down due to electron losses as soon as it is manufactured) And this is the reason lights have a limited lifetime. Electronic ballasts may re-ignite faster but this is due to an increase in the current allowed for a short period of time to heat the gases to a stable state faster - this costs lifespan losses in the bulb - which may help explain why bulbs go out more often in an electronic ballast circuit. The bulb is designed with its own ignition time natural to the gas used and given the circuitry to make this happen in a natural way - the electronic ballast tries to beat nature - you can't do that without some kind of penalty in the Energy Conservation equation. Always allow a bulb to cool down, cool to the touch, before re-igniting or you may burn out your bulb. The bulb is designed to have a slow start. Its kind of like glow plugs in a diesel first they have to get hot then the fuel can begin to burn and ignite, as it gets warmer the light bulb emits more photons. The difference of it being hot started is the metal wires inside the electrical circuit in the bulb can burn to an open circuit even if the gas inside the arc tube is still good. The gas needs time to heat up and create an arc of gas plasma to complete its stable state circuit - or ping goes the darkness. Exploding bulbs? Maybe you put a 400w into a 1000w magnetic socket or you splashed water on it while it was hot.

Electronics a term used in this post liberally and generally. Generally these are components, capacitors, resistors, inductor coils, transistors, diodes, Op amps, oscillators, flip flops, many others and in many sizes types and uses. All of these have curves and spikes and even clocked timing sequences and many have signals generated that can be tuned into like a radio - also known as RFI radio frequency interference or EMI electromagnetic interference. In reality both of these terms are the same as any electric field comes with a magnetic field. Radio waves are electromagnetic and was invented before any real understanding of light - which is also an electromagnetic wave - so the term stuck around. Simply put, the more electronics you have in a circuit the more complex the design must be to provide all the circuit control and the more EMI you will have. It is also simple to understand that with many electronics in a circuit the over all less efficient it will be when adding the PF of each component together for a circuit of the same power output of the same frequency Hz. If you look up the specs of these electronic ballasts it will show you that a 1000w output requires a 1060w input depending on brand. An Electronic ballast runs at a different frequency than a Magnetic ballast. Therefore you can get some PF losses back by creating a higher frequency for the circuit to run. But from the bulb's perspective it is similar to running at DC or a higher output which can get more lumens from the bulb. Again you have that Energy Conserved law. The Bulb will operate at higher than designed lumen output due to gases being excited at faster than designed rates which reduces the lifespan of the bulb - there is a finite half life of gas molecules bombarding each other causing electron loss and photon output. Dimmer controls on MH or HPS? You cannot dim a MH or HPS this feature is actually a switch so you can run several different wattage rated bulbs. You cannot dim a 1000w HPS to 600w the bulb is not designed that way. These so called dimmers also feature a super light that increases the lumen output by providing more voltage or higher frequency to increase the speed of the gas molecules. Again this reduces the lifespan of the bulb as the gas is used up faster.

Magnetic coils have a natural ability to hold current and actually save it, its a reactive circuit. If the gas in the bulb gets a bit more excited - probability states that at times the molecules will bombard each other more often than stable state and also sometimes less than stable state - the reactive nature of the magnetic coil will inversely react to these natural occurrences. When the bulb wishes to take more energy, due to more excited gas, the coil will hold back current and when the bulb gases take less energy the coil will release more current keeping the bulb at a even output. This is something an average electronic ballast cannot due naturally and it would have to be an extremely sensitive and well designed electronic ballast with expensive quality materials to do it - doubtful for commercial products. Of course magnetic ballasts have considerations of quality of materials. In general the PF of the magnetic ballast should be in the specs however the quality of the bulb or its PF also must be considered. A poor bulb in an excellent ballast or vice versa can make the overall PF lower than spec. Magnetic ballasts can also react with the input energy from the power grid making it another good choice over an electronic ballast. There are switchable magnetic ballasts, I have one that switch from MH 1000w to HPS 1000w the difference in the circuit is an ignitor and cap for the HPS and the MH just uses the Cap - I may have that backwards its late - anyway it is just a bypass of part of the circuit to accommodate the other. The cool thing is I can run 1000w MH for veg and then switch to 1000w HPS for bloom in one lamp/ballast. This brings question to why digital ballasts have a dimmer (really a switch that is just a knob) to a lower wattage bulb but not different type for wavelength changes - no you have buy the upgraded one or two different ballasts at quite a high price.

Lumens per watt and lifespan of bulb. In most cases the more lumens output per watt is the most efficient, not including light spectrum or wavelength as some wavelengths are not in all bulbs and there is a cost for certain hard to get wavelengths. In flourescent, MH, or HPS you get different lumens and wavelengths. In the case of MH and HPS, as stated before running the currents higher or exciting the gases more will reduce bulb life. CFLs have their own electronic ballast built into them and until recently you could not dim them but these use low watts and and a high frequency to excite the mercury which hits the phosphor coated glass. The phosphor is what emits photons.

Lifespan of Ballasts this is simple, electronic digital ballasts will burn out or fail much faster than magnetic ballasts for the simple reason there are more components to cause a cascading failure. Magnetic coils last for ages with negligible losses over time. I know this from education of materials used in manufacturing as well as experience of building guitar tube amplifiers which use transformers - basically Magnetic coils - and inductors which are the same thing as a magnetic ballast - magnetic material with a copper winding wrapped around it. I have tube amps that are forty and fifty years old. If you add lifespan as a part of power factor (since a burnt component can cause the failure of the product)...electronic digital ballasts lose every time.

Power grid the power grid is something I rarely see in these conversations. It is obvious a spike, either over or under is a regular occurrence in the power supplying your grow room. If you put a volt meter to your power socket and watched it at 12 am and then 6 am, 12pm, 5pm etc on a hot day you will see your voltage go from 120VAC to 110VAC. At that point you can see it spike up and down as dinner and air conditioning kicks in from you and your neighbors. You would have to have a large battery bank with power conditioners, rectifiers, inverters and even independent power generators to prepare for a worse case scenario for your grow in bloom stage. Most growers can't afford it and with most growers having some instances of power failures or light leaks etc. with still a nice yield that was not very affected, that conversation becomes moot. However spikes and dips will cause premature failures of components in electronic digital ballasts as well as bulbs where as magnetic ballasts will absorb the spike or dip naturally and react without any harm to the ballast or bulb. Further, loss of ground or a rise in the ground floor from a near miss lightning strike or a ground loop can make electronics fail early. Losing ground lifts the ground to the voltage of the supply which can reverse the direction of current in polarized circuits, burning out or causing a loss and re-ignite of the bulb or even damaged circuits. This can happen with solar flares, or heavy EMI. Magnetic ballasts can be affected by these too, will not fail but, a bulb re-ignite or burnout could happen as the solar flare can cause a current surge in the ballast via induced current from the positive ions from the solar flare even if the breaker or fuse blows out first. A magnetic field moving in an electronic field induces current and the inverse also causes induced current.

Bottom line There is no more efficient, robust, or longer lasting circuit than a magnetic coil. I suspect that electronic digital ballast users are only now beginning to see and understand, metaphorically speaking, what the performers in the audio industry know, nothing beats analog and the sound and robustness of tube amplifiers due to their natural sound in recording and live performance. They are similar in gas tubes in circuits with reactance matched magnetic transformers as are gas bulbs in circuits with reactance matched magnetic ballasts - both are magnetic coils that push and pull, give and take, as the performance of the gas tubes changes as necessary. You just can't get that from digital performance equipment. I have a pile of Digital signal processors DSPs, Computers, Phones, touchpad controlled Dishwashers, DVD players, CD players, iPods that are burnt in some way. And in the other room I have all my tube amps I practice and perform on continually changing only a tube once a year or so. The marketing for the new electronic digital ballasts is bogus and trying to get you to buy things you don't need for twice the price or higher.

The truth about Magnetic Ballasts power wastage is that there is no power wastage. Magnetic ballasts are the most efficient.

Thanks for reading and I hope this helps grow some cannabis.

:peace:X
Brilliant 👍😎
 
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