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175w MH ballast only pulling 120w?

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sfsuphysics

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Ok something is wrong with my ballast. Now I have an older custom sealife, magnetic ballast (dual) it's really looking funky from rust over the ages, however today when I was trying to gauge how much power my tanks are drawing I came to a shocking revelation.

The ballast is only drawing 120 watts! I used a kill-o-watt meter, and sure enough it started out rather low 50watts, figure it's warming up,etc, however after leaving it sit for an hour or so, I looked at the KaW meter and it showed 120watts across it. Tested it on the other ballast, also 175watts, and the same thing!

Now here's a question, since I doubt an old magnetic ballast is only pulling 70% of what it's rated at, could there be something wrong with the ballast? My bulbs fire just fine on them. And even though I really hate to say this (because eye balling how bright they are really isn't very scientific) but... they look pretty damn bright as it is.

Other option, some how my KaW meter is being fooled somehow by the ballast ?? Perhaps the magnetic ballast has some "back flow" (for lack of a better term) which is fooling the electronics?

Anyways, just wanted to know what others thought or if they heard or experienced this as well. I got a dual 150w setup that I was going to replace just to save power but jesus that one pulls 160w per ballast!
 
Custom Sealife? How the heck old is that thing? That sounds about right on the 150w they usually draw ~160-170w. So I would assume the CS ballasts are getting tired, however I'm not the electrical type (other than getting zapped every now and then).
 
Yup Jeremy CSL ballast, and it's older than... well ok it was one of the last ballasts they made before going out of business :D Could be a bunch of things that are wrong with it I'm sure, however I'm just curious if anyone has ever heard of something like this, in which case maybe they know the reason... like "oh sounds like your capacitors are fried" etc.
 
Alright a bit of an update, I found out I had another 175w magnetic ballast sitting around (man it's amazing all the junk we got!) Anyways, wired it up quickly, fired it up, and after a few minutes sure enough that ballast is pulling almost 200 watts! Which sounds more like what it should pull. Even the bulb burns different (less blue more white which I don't like), and looking at the bulb you can see that bright central region surrounded by the "starburst" pattern (basically you squinting and your eyelashes defracting light... well looking at the bulb hitting 120watts you can see the glass central part and all the wires hooking up to it...

So yeah something is wrong, I don't think it matters how the socket is hooked up... although I will swap those just to check. And last but not least I'll swap out the capacitors to see if that's the issue.
 
Well I found out the caps were fruity, now they pull 190-200watts All is good in happy land.

Although it makes me wonder how long those caps have been bad, those were my first metal halide setup I used, no wonder nothing grew very well under them, they weren't even firing at full capacity! Also explains my AoG zoas stretching like they weren't getting enough light.

Wonder if I can swap out for a capacitor that's not quite the same capacitance, and I'm not getting an icecap :p
 
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