Notes: |
This is an example of a type of lamp Philips have
developed which is starting to gain quite an acceptance, bringing the
advantages of good quality white light, a high colour rendering index
and high luminous output of metal halide technology into applications
where previously high pressure sodium lamps were the popular
choice. To emphasise this fact, this series of lamps is
electrically and mechanically compatible with existing SON (high
pressure sodium) control gear, meaning that the upgrade cost when
switching from high pressure sodium light to metal halide is cut
significantly when doing so by switching to these lamps.
Normally switching lighting technologies would require at least the
ballast and igniter in
the fixture in question, whereas in this case all that is needed is for
a new lamp to be fitted - even the "integral" style of high pressure
sodium lamps have been catered for - there is a version of the HPI
lamp, with the -S suffix, which has an internal starter.
Other lamps require a high voltage external igniter, as with SON lamps.
The only difference, is that the majority of this series of lamps
require a closed fixture with a front cover of hard glass, whereas the
vast majority of SON lamps can be operated in open fixtures.
There are however versions of this lamp with the -P suffix which are
protected by a Teflon coating on the outer envelope, making the lamps
suitable for use in open fixtures.
As with SON lamps, these are available in a huge range of wattages,
starting at 250W (which is admittedly rather high compared to the
smaller SON lamps), right through to a maximum 2000W - giving out a
rather crazy figure of 200'000 Lumens. Not one you'd want to
put in your living room that, not unless you want to leave your shadow
burned into the wall when you leave anyway!
These metal halide lamps are slightly less efficient than their SON
counterparts, the 400W lamp here achieving a respectable 89.7Lm/W,
whereas its SON equivalent comes in at 120Lm/W. The figure is
still highly respectable though, and the approximate 25% drop in
efficacy when fitting this HPI lamp rather than a 400W SON lamp is
likely seen as a worthwhile sacrifice in return for getting clean white
light with good colour rendering abilities in a lot of cases.
NOTE: I
do not presently have gear on which to operate this lamp.
Operational photographs and a spectral analysis image will be added
once I acquire such equipment. |