Light Testing & Maintenance
A series of testers to assist in the maintenance and troubleshooting of lighting fixtures throughout any commercial or industrial facility. All aspects of the system are covered including ballasts, ignitors, starters, capacitors, and resistors for the following types of light: High and low pressure sodium, metal halide, neon, mercury vapor, and fluorescent. High intensity discharge (HID) fixture testers; both medium E26 E27 and mogul E39 E40 - based fixtures can be tested to check starting pulse voltage and open circuit voltage. Check forward & reverse diode bias, low pressure sodium vapor, and individual procedures for testing fluorescent ballasts. Test light bulbs as well as ballasts.
Industrial Lighting
All types of lighting in a facility including general lighting, supplemental lighting and auxiliary or emergency lighting require routine maintenance to ensure a safe and productive work environment. General types of lighting include:
Incandescent
Incandescent lamps are much less efficient than fluorescent or HID lamps, and they are prone to short service life. But currently, incandescent lighting retains important advantages that will continue to make it popular, including good color rendering and the low cost of lamps and fixtures. Incandescent lamps and fixtures are simple, requiring none of the many accessories of fluorescent and HID lights. It is free of the noise, electromagnetic interference, low power factor, and harmonic distortion of other types of lighting.
Halogen
Halogen lamps are filled with krypton or xenon gases and feature shock resistance & low power consumption. Halogen lamps emit color temperatures from 2700 degree K to 3350 degree K.
Fluorescent
Fluorescent fixture systems often present 4-6 times more lamps to maintain, with the primary factor being labor. As lamps fail, fixtures exhibit lamp outages, which can affect space appearance, not to mention produce less light. Typically, a lift or similar mechanism will be required, as pole changers do not work with linear fluorescent lamps. If maintenance is an extremely critical issue, consider induction lamps, which can provide up to a 100,000-hour rated lamp life and continued performance in extremely cold conditions, but for a much higher installed cost.
Compact Fluorescent
CFLs are single-ended T4 and T5 lamps that are bent to form a compact shape. Screw-in CFLs have an integral ballast with a screw base for easy replacement of incandescent lamps. GE offers multi-voltage, multi-lamp and multi-entry ballasts for a wide range of CFL plug-in lamps. Multivolt ProLine® CFL ballasts are designed for plug-in lamps so that a ballast will survive over the useful life of approximately 3-to-4 lamp lives.
High Intensity Discharge (HID)
Light is emitted by a gas or vapor which is excited by an electric current flowing through it. A ballast is needed to start the lamp and to regulate its operation. Discharge lamps have overwhelming energy efficiency advantages over incandescents. High-intensity discharge (HID) lighting has long been the dominant type for industrial locations and external lighting. Major improvements in color rendering have allowed HID lighting to move into the commercial sector, where it competes with incandescent and fluorescent lighting in many facilities. There are many selection factors for HID ballasts, which must be matched precisely to the lamps. Currently, most HID ballasts are magnetic. The main types are reactor ballasts, constant wattage ballasts, and constant wattage autotransformer ballasts. Their characteristics include input wattage, current output, efficiency, lamp compatibility, acoustical noise starting temperature, dimming capability, power factor, crest facter and harmonic distortion. Ballasts for metal halide lamps and high pressure sodium lamps may require separate ignitors (and/or capacitors).