Nice! All of my PCs are modern compared to this bad boy.

Yeah Joe M. Had found one of these in his collection and only asked for a small amount for it. My OV-10IB is mounted outside right now so this isn't mounted on it since this isn't really fit for outdoor use anymore but when I swap out the OV-10IB for another light I'll put this back on it.

I traded him a while back several of these for a group of NOS fisher pierce mid 60's ps's.

Ah sweet! I love the 60s-present PCs but my favorites are actually the 80s Ripleys and Fisher Pierces.

Aren't the 80s FPs same/similar to the early 90s ones? I have a '93 specimen.

No. The 80s ones have outside-glued windows and hard plastic. 90s ones have internal slide-in-and-lock-into-place windows like most other PCs and have soft plastic covers. The mid-late-70s Fisher Pierces are actually more similar to the 90s ones.

Ah OK I see. Interesting to know nonetheless.

Yeah Fisher Pierce had a lot of variations lol. Ripley PCs remained essentially the same from 1970 until they were bought by SouthConn around 2000-ish. (In 1990 they, too, went to a soft plastic cover but kept the same design).

I like the old FPs a lot though. Mine isn't the most sensitive though LOL. It's installed under an eve and won't shut off unless direct sunlight is actually hitting that wall! So it's almost a dayburner! (and yes, the window is pointed outward).

The only issue with the glued window is after several years it usually falls off and starts to dayburn. But they are still neat. Occasionally I find some really nicely preserved ones that were installed in fitures such as cooper traditionares so they never got real beat with the sun.

FPs are usually pretty sensitive so that PC must have been facing east or west, toward direct sunlight.

Sometimes the windows come off but most of them kept their windows (at least around here).

I guess this one goes 240VAC?

Nope this unit is 120V with a 500W capacity instead of 1000W. I assume the reason for the 500W rating was that it was cheaper and still covered all the MV wattages up to 400W. Once the kinks were worked out of the PC manufacturing process, it probably became cheaper to just make them all 1000W max.

I have two DTL 208-277V (red) PCs but they actually work on 120V! It's apparently cheaper for DTL to just use a 120-277V circuit board for both their 120-277V blue PCs and 208-277V red PCs. Not sure if their 120V ones are actually 120-277V as well, but it wouldn't surprise me!

We use ALR pc's which are rated 105-305v. Only for some reason they have a rather high failure rate on 277 circuits.

Oh, I see, i was wondering why its a red color that stands for 240V operation.

Red stands for 208, 240, and 277V. Hmm interesting that they have a higher rate of failure on 277V. I've heard that ALRs tend to behave strangely though. I have one that will work fine sometimes but other times will not turn the light on at night. The light has to be unplugged and plugged in again (the PC is not touched at all when I do this, so I don't think it's a loose connection).

Here all the utility company lights use 120V PCs (either 120V lights or 240V with 120V PCs). They use dark gray Fisher Pierce Sun-Tech 120V units that are very sensitive when they work (they turn on the lights really late and the first crack of dawn they all shut off) but a LOT of them are duds right out of the box! I see lights get relamped and the new PC is a dayburner! They probably don't take the time to test the PCs (repairs are done at night) and take for granted that the product was pre-tested. They've gotten better with the dayburners all over the place so they must be testing the PCs before leaving now. Or maybe Sun-Tech's quality has gotten better? This has been going on since 2012. It seems if they make it past the first month without dayburning then they'll last.

There's a lot of lights in urban areas that they've relamped and the new PCs are so sensitive that the light stays off all night due to illuminated signs that are as far away as across the street! There's one light in my neighborhood and the house right next to it has a motion sensor PAR light. When a car drives by or person walks by, the motion sensor turns on the PAR floods and shuts off the street light. I kid you not! Most ridiculous thing ever lol. I reported the light as "cycling" and made a note that the PC should be oriented away from the flood light but they probably just changed the lamp and PC lol. I haven't checked too recently since I don't go walking in the cold weather (that's how I firs t noticed it; walking by the flood light, which is mounted two stories up, so the sensor detects street traffic.

I've also noticed sometimes that the old PC is left in place during a relamping, which I love, since often times the photocells will outlast at least a couple lamp changes (unless it's sub-par quality like FP/S-T lately).

I've seen/heard good things about the DTL PCs. Even though they're Chinese-made they seem to last and they have a fair amount of options (they've reduced their offerings considerably over the past 10 years though). Ripley is probably the top-of-the-line PC now but they don't come cheap. They sell at retail prices right from Ripley! I'm sure a utility company would probably get a better deal though...

Here they had always ordered 120-277V Fisher Pierce and Ripley SunSwitch PCs with gray covers from the late-60s until around 1991. Then they ordered the same PCs in their standard blue color (a nice baby blue for the Ripleys and a dark blue for the FPs, which generally turned to a baby blue after years of sunlight, making them "dry rot" and develop a white film). Then around 1996/1997, they switched to 120V PCs in brown, probably to distinguish them from the old gray 120-277V units (even though all our lights used 120V PCs and they could've ordered 120V PCs all that time instead of custom-ordering gray 120-277V units lol). Anyway, these brown PCs were all DTLs at first AFAIK and some had yellow "CAUTION 120VAC ONLY" stickers while others didn't. Then between 1998 and 2001 they switched to Sun-Tech and Fisher Pierce brown PCs before the merger; they were still separate companies) and continued using brown FP/S-Ts until around 2005-2007 when they started just ordering them in the standard 120V color again (gray). The Sun-Techs vary from a medium gray to an almost-black charcoal gray. I've seen some with a glossy looking cover and others with a matte finish cover too.

That's why time-delay PCs are so useful...even if that motion light is only on 15 seconds (I assume that's the case) then the HPS still has to cool down and restrike...

Well they have to improve their own quality.

Yeah, but overall I prefer more sensitive PCs...the light isn't on as much when not truly needed. Except for cases like Mike just described. Motion lights, car headlights, etc. turning the light off.

I agree that it reduces burn time on the lamp, so longer lamp life and reduced kWh/year consumption. However, these things are TOO sensitive. And NGrid is being sneaky about it because the kWh charge is an estimate, meaning not what the light actually consume. So by using more sensitive PCs, the lights are using less energy but the city is still charged for the energy it would consume if it had a "normal" PC. and their PCs vary day-to-day too. I tried keeping track of what time the light comes on in front of my house and it varies up to 20 minutes from one day to the next without a significant change in the weather. It must sense "invisible light" like infrared or whatever that might be higher some days than others. These "new" PCs are not consistent with one another either. Four lights in a row on my street were all relamped at the same time with the same new PCs and they all come on at different times and in different orders all the time. One light doesn't always come on before the other three. The CdS eye photocells have more reliable/predictable turn-on/off times.