Can You Put A High Pressure Sodium Bulb In A Metal Halide Fixture

A high pressure sodium lamp requires a ballast to operate and a metal halide.

Can you put a high pressure sodium bulb in a metal halide fixture.

No metal halide lamps require the electrical operating characteristics that the associated metal halide ballast produces. The primary visual difference between them is that metal halide light is white and the light emitted from a high pressure sodium bulb is amber orange. A high pressure sodium ballast also is equipped with an igniter used to. In practice we have used sodium vapour ballasts for metal halide lamps without problems for years.

A high pressure sodium bulb produces light that is reddish yellow while metal halide bulbs produce a much more balanced white light that has more of the visual spectrum. Whilst you can stick the lamp with the hps sodium gear you will not get the correct colour temperature due to lamp not being at correct operating temperatures and you will drastically shorten the lifespan of it. In principle one must use metal halide ballasts for the corresponding metal halide lamp. Does that mean that i can t or shouldn t replace the original 70 watt hps with say a 100 watt bulb assuming it was the same size and would.

Fixture is the word to describe what the lamp goes into. In fact they re roughly as efficient as leds in terms of their light output for each watt of energy used. The ballast is specific to the type of vapor and wattage. While upgrading to led provides a lot of benefits high pressure sodium hps lamps still provide some of the most efficient lighting available.

Light like maybe a metal halide bulb or is the ballast in this fixture specific and can only with with high pressure sodium bulbs. High pressure sodium bulbs lamps are an old standby for lighting that s still used today in spite of so much talk of led lights. These bulbs cannot be interchanged without changing their ballast the regulating element in all light bulbs. A metal halide bulb produces about 65 110 lumens of light per watt while a high pressure sodium bulb produces about 96 150 lumens of light per watt.

But the converse is not true. Stick the hps stuff in the bin and invest in an icecap. Their operation is a bit different and they therefore require different ballasts.