Gallery of Lights
The Site => General discussion => Topic started by: NiMo on February 06, 2014, 07:21:23 PM
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This question was bugging me today. I was thinking back to the late 1970s-early 1980s here in my hometown of Buffalo, New York. At that time, Buffalo started the process of replacing mercury and incandescent streetlights to HPS. Now, here's the kick. Many of the incandescents had already been replaced with MV in the late 1960s-early 1970s on side streets with wood poles, but many of the main thoroughfares had either 6.6A Series Incandescent, Mercury, or were already 120 Volt Multiple Mercury circuits. Now to the question. Multiple luminaire replacement (MV to HPS) is a simple matter of replacing the entire fixture, lamp, and P-cell. But what of Series Circuits? For example, Seneca St. had 6.6A MV lights until around 1979. During the changeout, half of the lights were brand new (at that time) General Electric M400 split doors with 250 watt HPS, and the other half Westinghouse OV20s with pole mounted Series Ballasts. How did they manage to keep both sides lit even though it was two totally different types of current?
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It seems like maybe one side of the road was wired for multiple (where the M-400 split doors were) and the OV-20s were still connected to the series circuits. Or maybe the M-400s has series ballasts inside them?
I don't quite understand what you mean though. Sorry about that. You can't run a multiple street light off a series circuit or run a series street light off a multiple circuit though, if that's what you're asking. Here in RI the series systems were replaced by multiple incandescent and multiple MV fixtures by the 60s. I don't think there are any series street light circuits here anymore.
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It seems like maybe one side of the road was wired for multiple (where the M-400 split doors were) and the OV-20s were still connected to the series circuits. Or maybe the M-400s has series ballasts inside them?
I don't quite understand what you mean though. Sorry about that. You can't run a multiple street light off a series circuit or run a series street light off a multiple circuit though, if that's what you're asking. Here in RI the series systems were replaced by multiple incandescent and multiple MV fixtures by the 60s. I don't think there are any series street light circuits here anymore.
The M400s were 120 Volt multiples.
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I'm assuming you could tell that the M400's were multiple wired as they had individual photocontrols, probably grey in color? I would guess that in that case, the wiring on that side of the street had been changed to multiple.
It was, and still is, possible to buy series HPS ballasts. There are more series circuits in the US that are STILL in use than you might think, though most are HID (Los Angeles County in California had many incandescent ones even as of 2010 but those are rapidly disappearing now that the lamps are no longer made). Someone I know has designed a transformer that can be used to run standard 120v fixtures off a 6.6A circuit. This will permit the use of LED streetlights without expensive rewiring of circuits. One of these transformers must be installed to power each individual light. I don't believe anything like this existed in the 1980's.