Well actually it DID say 150W in the auction listing and there was little bits of yellow NEMA tag left on the light in the picture so you can tell it was 150W HPS. Glad to see yours has an intact NEMA tag. There's a M-250R2 on ebay that is a multi-wattage 100/150W HPS. It would be cool to get one of those!

Nice !

I guess I didn't see that. xD And Multi-wattage? That's interesting, never seen anything like that before. But this light is pretty nice, and is in great condition.

Yep back in the 80s NEES (New England Electric System, which was the parent company of the electric company here up until 2000) had installed tons of M-250A2 FCOs, all equipped with 100/175W MV 240V ballasts with the photocells wired for 120V. (all of their lights from the mid-60s to the late 80s were 240V with 120V PC sockets.) There's three spades and two wires on the ballast. A load wire that goes to the lamp's central contact and a line wire that connects to one spade for 100W or move the wire to the other spade and the ballast runs 175W.

Multi-wattage ballasts are still made in 100/150W HPS and 250/400W HPS. GE wires their fixtures for the lowest wattage on multi-wattage fixtures, so when a multi-wattage fixture is ordered, it's factory wired for the lowest setting (same for dual-voltage ballasts such as 120/240V ballasts). For example, the 100/175W M-250A2 FCOs that were used here were all factory wired for 100W MV. Most of them were installed as 100W units but some were reset for the 175W tap and the spare blue 17 NEMA tag supplied with the fixture was simply stuck over the factory-installed blue 10 sticker. Not sure if the M-250R1s installed here in the late 70s-early 80s were multi-wattage or single wattage because I see some blue 17s stuck on sideways, upside-down etc, something GE wouldn't have done.

Do they have 250 x 400 watt HPS fixtures in the M-250 or are they only on the M-400? I think the M-400 makes more sense, cause 400 watts in a small fixture can be a bit overkill.

How common are multi-tap M-250 R2's? I notice they aren't that common.

The AEL 125, Cooper OVX, Cooper OVY/F, GE M-400R2/A2, and M-400 and M-400A are available with 250/400W HPS ballasts as well as their utility flood lights from each manufacturer. AEL and GE offer the 100/150W HPS ballasts in their 115, 315, M-250R2, and M-250A2 respectively but Cooper doesn't offer a 100/150W ballast. NEMA heads aren't made with the dual-wattage ballasts either.

I don't think dual-wattage fixtures are that common. It's probably most common with flood lights, since most utilities only offer 250 or 400W HPS flood lights, which allows them to only stock one fixture type.

We actually stock 250 and 400 watt ballast for floodlighting. We are actually changing to cooper lights at work which shocks the life out of me since we've been hardcore GE for years. I d already began seeing the copper acrylic lens in the stock room and 250 watt OVZ on the shelf.

You mean 250/400W combos or 250W and 400W separate units? I'm not sure what NGrid uses but I assume single wattage ballasts. NGrid has been using Cooper for 250W+ lamps since around 2012 but they continue to use GE M-250R2s for 50-100W HPS lights here to this day (they don't use 150W HPS here). They seem to be using Lexalite/AEL 115 plastic lenses whenever they replace a lamp in a fixture though. Even if the refractor is clean and in good shape, they seem to replace it with a Lexalite refractor. NGrid seems to flip between GE and Cooper every few years but never used AEL (unfortunately, as I'd love to see some AELs go up here since the latest ones we have are early/mid-90s Thomas & Betts 113s and 125s. Not many 125s at all). For PCs, NGrid has been religiously using Sun-Tech PCs (even before the Fisher Pierce/Sun-Tech merger they used Sun-Techs) and they had been using GE lamps but a few years ago they began using Sylvania lamps and have been using them since.

Have you seen any brand new Coopers with the old style glass? I saw a couple OVXs and OVZs go up here with old style glasses, which threw me off since the first Coopers used here recently (in 2012) had the newer round glass. Did they revert back to the old style glass? Maybe NGrid had bought a crapload of Coopers in the midst of the refractor change and Cooper sold the last squared glass fixtures to NGrid... I like the old glass better on the OVX but like the new glass on the OVZ better. The new Cooper glass has the cleanest lamp distribution I have ever seen with a clear lamp. Very commendable. Of course Holophane gets all the credit lol.

BTW, did you get a lot of snow in western Mass Tony? We got about an inch of slush here. Mostly rain with some sleet midday. I think it's sleeting again now but it had switched back to rain this afternoon for a while. Pretty windy here too.

Yeah I meant 250 and 400 watt separate units. I have not seen the type of glass used yet on the OVZ since we literally just got them in. We still are using up the remaining M-250R2's. I'm wondering if we will see the OVX appear for 400 watt fixtures and no longer install R3's. Most of the new copper installs I've seen installed with the other utility's around here have the new glass. I agree with you that the fixtures look nicer with the new glass and the distribution is much smoother.

We have gotten about 8" of snow at my home. It started snowing around 10am and hadn't stopped since. I'm lucky Ive been on vacation this week because we are having power outages and probably would of been spending thanksgiving working.

Ah NGrid was using both R2s and OVZs for 250W for a while but now it's all OVZs. They were still installing M-400s but they must have run out since now it's all OVXs. Bummer since I despise 400W small fixtures lol. It works for NGrid though since apparently they have a policy that medium fixtures require two linemen to remove them according to my friend Marco, who's friend is a NGrid lineman. They take out the PC and wrap the light with a band of tape over the refractor. Then like six months later it's finally replaced. Sometimes I need to report them again to get them replaced.

Wow 8"! It's still raining/sleeting here. Yeah glad to hear you don't have to spend your holiday working. I have a nice 4-day weekend starting tomorrow since there's no school Friday either so I'll be stringing the Christmas lights this weekend.