Shop light electronic ballast?

[Volvo farmer]

I wanted to put some lights in my off grid shop. I've got one of the cheap Xantrex Xpower inverters in there, 1500W. So I go to Home Depot and they have these 48" shop light fixtures for some silly price, like $7. It says "elecronic ballast" on the box so I think this is good for modified square wave inverters. Well, when I opened them up they have a ballast looking thing in there. Much smaller than the old shop light ballasts I've seen though. When I try to run these off the inverter, it will not start both fixtures at the same time. If I plug one in and then the other, no problem, but if I try to turn on a switch with both fixtures attached, they just flicker. I actually wanted to run 4 of these lights but got stuck when I found out the inverter won't even start two of them.

What does "electronic ballast" mean? Do you think I could start 4 compact flourescents more sucessfully than shop lights? Is anyone else running multiple 48" fixtures off of a cheap inverter?

Thanks,

[Norm]

I suppose the tubes didn't come with them....

what size tubes did you put in them 20 or 25 watt?

 If not maybe lower wattage tubes may work....

and then maybe not.

 I think we'd be farther ahead to use BThumble's?? 12 volt system of fluorescent lighting as he posted recently.

                ( :>) Norm.

[Psycogeek]

i was told that the STARTING for florescents takes mondo juice

and that if you did not run a florescent for TIME, that it was not really that efficient

so it could be the SPIKE of power when it starts up, not its operation.

[K3CZ]

Volvo farmer:

I don't know what is going on with your particular units, but apparently there is quite a bit of variation between brands in electrical flourescent "shop fixtures".  I put up four Home Depot 4' dual bulb fixtures in my barn, and equipped them with two T8 32 watt bulbs each.  (Make sure you get the fixtures labeled "all - temperature".)  They work fine when powered by my "el-cheapo" 400 watt red box inverter, all together, yet; right on down to at least 20 deg. F.

Therefore, there is hope; all you have to do is get the right combination.

                                       Van   K3CZ

[Jerry]

Hi Volvo farmer.

I'm running 60 thats sixty 4 ft fl lights in my store shop from a Sima 2000 watt sq, wave or as the inverter ind. likes to call mod sine inverter. Works great.

This is with the old stile transformer ballast though.

                    JK TAS Jerry

[DanG]

Is non-start with the fluorescent fixtures being only power draw? A small load on same circut might be the cure, just not enough instantaneous current from idle circut.  

[nothing to lose]

I would think it's the lights/fixture also.

I have a wallmart 4' fixture and about 300-400watt Xantrex inverter built into one of those rechargable battery booster aircompressors  setups. Entire unit only costs about $70 at Sears I think so you know it can't be the best inverter inside either.

Even with the little built in battery and another load going also I had no problem lighting up 2 4' tubes in the walmart shoplight. Not sure if I ever tried more than one fixture at a time though off that little thing. But if my Xantrex 400watt inverter lights up one fine (even with a a second load already running) then it would seem that 1500watt inverter should be able to light at least 3 at once, minimum! I think I have lit 2 at once, but that I cannot say for sure.

And these are the ones that Wal-mart puts on sale often for about $7 also. I think normal price is $10. So if what you have don't work maybe you could try these. As for the ballast I don't know what they are. As a side note on this, I took the cord off one of these and hard wired it to grid AC and can only light 1 tube now for some reason!

My wires are connected the same as the cord was just runs to a wall switch now instead of a plug in, but I can light the same tube in either side if installed one at a time, and both tubes work fine one at a time. But intalling both tubes at once always only one tube lights and it's always the one on the left as it's mounted now. I also took the 2 tubes from another working light and still the same thing.

What's up with that I do not know, it worked perfect before I changed the wires and mounted it, on either grid or inverter. I have of course double checked all wire connections and such.

 If you want to use the ones you have you might try just having a switch for each fixture, turn them on one at time and see how many you can run. Of course a nice thing about doing that is you can turn on only the ones you want as needed also, not all of them everytime. So if you just need alittle light to see to grab something or carry stuff in and out you could run just 1 or 2 fixtures, and if your going to be working and need them all then flip them all on one at a time maybe. This is probably what I will do myself when I setup the lath/mill combo I just bought. Normally I won't need but one fixture when running in and out alot, but I will want several when actually working on stuff spread out around the work area. Of course I would only nead maybe 2 fixtures if working in just one area like right at the combo unit.

I think that would save alot of battery power durring a week for me, even though my 5k inverter should run them all fine.

 Depending how big an area I build for shop work I will probably have about 6-8 fixtures in the new building. For now I geuss I'll just work out of the back of a box truck till I get the building built

[Trivo]

Electronic Ballast? do you think it may have something molded in the plug to get it started? try reversing the leads and see if the other side fluro works

Trivo

[BT Humble]

When I try to run these off the inverter, it will not start both fixtures at the same time. If I plug one in and then the other, no problem, but if I try to turn on a switch with both fixtures attached, they just flicker. I actually wanted to run 4 of these lights but got stuck when I found out the inverter won't even start two of them.

Open the fixtures, locate the big capacitor, and snip off its leads with a pair of wire cutters (ie. remove it from the circuit).  It's there for power factor correction, and if you're running off an inverter it'll cause you problems.

They'll run just fine from an inverter, but sometimes they'll have a nasty buzz and you also have the overhead of running the inverter at far less than full capacity (which is nowhere near the 85-90% efficient that most manufacturers claim).

The brightness will be slightly less than you'd get from plugging the same light into the mains, too.

BTH

[BT Humble]

I suppose the tubes didn't come with them....

How much do tubes cost over there?  Here in Australia you can buy standard "cool white" 4' 36W tubes for AUD$2.20 or so at the supermarket (~USD$1.65).

(I think that $7 is a BARGAIN!)

BTH

[BT Humble]

What does "electronic ballast" mean?

Have a read of this, it'll tell you everything you ever need to know about fluorescent lighting (and probably more than you wanted to know!):

http://www.thekrib.com/Lights/fluor-tech.html

BTH

[hobot]

I've had similar hair pulling and stumbling in dark floroligtht issues

as you'all, even with a single $15 40 watt 4' dual tube shop light off

a freaking 8800 watt dual Trace 240 V/36 amp power plant that ran my

shed, grinder, drills. big squirel cage blower even 3/4 hp Sears ancient

shop compressor to 125 lb.  I'm been up and down grades of price in

various wattages of bulbs, same deal, only one particular fixture

would light bright both bulbs while 3 other idenical and later swiched

out brands would only dimmly light a single or both bulbs. Lower watts

helped but barely useable not to trip on stuff. Also have had similar

dimness on grid power. Wierdness has continued on replacing 30 amp 120V

circuit breakers in shed but no help so suspect the main 60 amp breakers

at house now. Have had wind blow down 240 3 wire, so ground line broke

but no change in lighting issues SO suspicion is moving to a bad

connection/ground and/or poor cicuit breakers in my genset to inverters

as well.  Both big ol type starters and tiny electronic ones both give

same poor floro results, which do BRIGHTEN up a lot if I am runing

a motor but since the lightening/storm line lnjury, motors are hard

to start and speed up. Hope there are clues for us all to follow up

on here and know what's what.

hobot

[Bryan1]

Hiya's,

       I'm currently running 8 12 volt compact fluro's exactly like the 240 volt ones but the 12 volt has a smaller screw. Anyway I'm currently only using 1 80 watt solar panel to trickle charge 2 200 amp batteries and I can have 1/2 of the lights on with no problems but putting them all on a few go dim. I suppose the losses in the wiring would be the problem so I'm thinking of employing a different system and using the cheap compact fluro's you get in the supermarket. Oatley electronics have an inverter kit that will power up to they say 6 240 volt cfcl lights from 12 volts and a rightup in siliconchip showed this kit powering a smalll colour TV!!!. As the 12 volt cfcl's cost around $20 each I reckon it's worth changing over as bulb replacment is a big worry and besides I have a shearing shed that needs lights and a spare deep cycle battery or two laying around.

Anyways enought of me ranting

Cheers Bryan

[nothing to lose]

Well I can now say it does not seem to take much battery power for my Xantrex power plus unit I mentioned to light a 4' fixture.

Who needs terrorists?? We have Racoons!

This morning about 4:45am I was woken by beeping all over my house! Yes, the grid went down again and I had to get up and shut off all the UPS's for the computers and other stuff! It was like an alarm clock factory here. Since the alarm clocks weren't working I just stayed up, mostly in the dark.

 Saw a neighbor in town latter and he said supposedly a Racoon got into something at a power station and that's why they claimed we were without power for at least 4hrs at which time I had left for town anyway.

Anyway back to the lights. All my stuff was at the other house, big inverter, little inverter, batteries ect.. so all I had was my Xantrex battery booster/starter inverter pack. Geuss what, I found out in the total dark, it was dead, I hadn't charged it after last use. Anyway it lit the 4' fixture both tubes, it flashed on and off 2 or 3 times quick then lit up just fine and ran great, till the inverter buzzed about 2 minutes latter the battery was dead so I shut it back off.

Later I turned it back on to see something quick, and the fixture flashed quickly on off a couple times and then they light up fine, but of course I got the buzzer warning of dead batteries again.

I think in total I turned the fixture on about 4 times using the dead built in battery and the 300-400watt inverter built into the unit. Probaly only a 20amphr battery at most I would geuss since I never looked inside to see it yet.

So I don't think it really takes all that much to start these cheap 4' walmart type shop light fixtures since mine did start on dead batteries and only ran a couple minutes before I got the low voltage warnings.

[ghurd]

I installed a cheap light on grid once that would not work.

When I touched it, it would light.

It had a grounding issue, and the house was old (2 wires, no ground).

Maybe the 'unusual' inverter ground is messing it up?

I would try only using the 2 wires to the inverter, and grounding the light chassis.

It may help.

Be careful if the inverter or batteries are also grounded, it can cause strange bad things. Depends on the inverter.

G-

[srnoth]

Yup, definately be careful with grounding anything connected to the inverter. I grounded the neutral of my inverter (the inverter had no ground - just live and neutral), and it worked for a few minutes, then the insides started to glow, sparks started flying and needless to say it stopped working. It did this even though my battery was not grounded. Infact, nothing on the system except that was grounded. Strange, I would have thought that because the rest of the system was isolated, that it would have worked. Anyway, it was a good thing it was only a cheap refurbished one I got for 20 bucks ;-).

Cheers,

Stephen.

[Nando]

Volvo farmer:

Electronic Ballast is a circuit that receives the rectified full wave AC to convert it to the high frequency AC voltage ( around 20 to about 50 KHZ).

This increase in frequency allows the lamp to generate up to 2 to 5 times the light level a regular CHOKE Ballast fluorescent lamps has ( lamp excited 120 times versus 40000 + times with the electronic Ballast).

Why the lamp is erratic, many times because there is not a GOOD GROUND -- this is a real problem that many are not aware --.

The grounding of the light reflector is needed to help the AC Voltage to ionize the gas in the lamp.

You could wrap a thin wire around the lamp, wire connected to the negative side of the power supply, to help the ionization of the lamp.

GOOD ground is needed always.

Regards

Nando