life saving on lec dimmed at minimum

I would like to know how many hours of life we can extend LEC systems, both ballasts and light bulbs.

Unfortunately I have not found reference material that explains how much we extend the life of the bulbs at medium power

My intention would be to connect a 3x315 configuration in a 3x1.40m² closet regulated at half power 50%, which would be a total of 150 x 3 = 450w in the cultivation room. This gives a total of 3 very relaxed light bulbs that extend the light very well, better than 2. In the long term it could be a saving on new bulbs and ballasts.

What is your opinion? Do you know any documents that explain the curve of hours of life in this case?

Thanks Guys Please Help

wouldnt this just cause the LUX to decrease across the canopy? Also will it kill the penetrating power of the light? I feel both of these issues make it not optimal.

I start my grows with my LED lights dimmed down and slowly ramp it up as they get older, once they hit flower, they are raining as much LUX across my canopy as they can take.

Dimming the bulbs can also cause fluctuations in spectrum and considering that is one of the biggest selling points of CMH, I personally wouldn't run my 315W dimmed...

To each his own though.
(Side note. CMH bulb life is pretty dang lengthy on it's own...)

I wouldn't be surprised if it shortened the life span.
Besides 3 x 315s in 3m x1.4m is under powered on full power.

So a quick google brought up this, which is contradictory to HID lights, which shift spectrum and reduce life span when not running at intended wattage.


It does seem to say that no negative effect happened nothing positive happened either.
So for a power saving exercise it has a purpose, outside of that its pointless.

Then again this brief abstract suggests otherwise.

Dimming shortens the bulb life. The arc is less stable.

1st essay
For each lamp, at 70% of its nominal power, the luminous efficacy is greater than 80 lm / W, the color rendering index is greater than 74 and the correlated color temperature increases by less than 800 K.
It contradicts the following:
2nd essay
The 150W CMH lamps operated at 100W and 76W showed no significant differences in light maintenance, survival and color rendering index compared to similar lamps operated at nominal power for the same time.

CRI and decrease of lumen / W, we must see how many lumens hour and CRI had before, but if we think that the old sodium vapor had a cri of 70 it does not seem to me much difference considering the power reduced by 70%.
The CCT increases by 800K, this is not a very big problem since if we have a 3100K or 3000K bulb the increase would be at 3900K at most.

Most studios speak of a decrease in operational and functional characteristics in less watt states, but they do not talk about the increase in survival time of the bulb. I already take it for granted that the increase in the life of the ballast will be double or more, knowing the electronic components by making them work more relaxed, voltage or watts, they last much longer. I refuse to have my ballast broken at 30000h is very little! shit wing the obsolescence programmed !!!!

Renfro, As you know that the arc is less stable, have you read it in any study?

I think there is a lack of specific studies for the current CMH CDM technology.
I have been reading and it seems that it depends a lot on the combination of metals used within the PCA in addition to the same PCA for best performance dimmed low.

My experience with two Solux blastros and Philips 3100k bulbs is that the attenuation, at first glance, is almost minimal but perceivable, that is why I was surprised that 50% continued to shine so much light, but this measured by eye, I have no lux meter and so on ... only a lux meter tablet.

coreywebster said:

I wouldn't be surprised if it shortened the life span.
Besides 3 x 315s in 3m x1.4m is under powered on full power.

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yes is very hig lux but for last week of flowering for streess ligthing and much more gum

Renfro said:

Dimming shortens the bulb life. The arc is less stable.

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How do you know that, where have you heard it, do you know any documents that talk about it?
I want to study these effects more and if it can be profitable for me

Yeahhhhhhh Fantastic manual explain me all
https://www.osram.com/media/resource/hires/339014/metal-halide-lamps-gb.pdf

For a conventional ballast, it can be presumed that the service life is defined by the choke temperature tw. A 10 °C increase in the tw temperature means that the service life is halved.

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OSRAM’s HID electronic ballast for example principally reaches its full nominal service life at the maximum permitted tc temperature. In practice, this means that any temperature levels below the tc temperature always prolong the effective service life. As a rule of thumb, it can be presumed that a temperature 10 °C below the printed maximum tc temperature will double the service life of the electronic ballast.

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.Smoke said:

Dimming the bulbs can also cause fluctuations in spectrum and considering that is one of the biggest selling points of CMH, I personally wouldn't run my 315W dimmed...

To each his own though.
(Side note. CMH bulb life is pretty dang lengthy on it's own...)

Click to expand...

Yea I thought one of the main benefits of all those fucking cmh fixtures and expensive ass Phillips lamps I bought was that they are rated at like 3 years continuous use.