We went out to eat 2 days ago

wvned

wvned

Premium Member
When we got home 3 of 4 T5 ballasts and 1 MH ballast were dead in the 240 gallon tank. 3 of 4 MH bulbs fired and 2 of 8 T5 tubes lit. Nothing else in the house was affected. I have no idea how this is even possible. There are bunches of DC pump controllers and 2 Hydros units on the same circuits. The clocks where all correct. All TVs and computers fine. The LEDs on the 180, okay.

Hamilton Technologies website has been down for a while. No matching parts.

So new lights for the 240 got ordered last night. 2 4 foot Coralcovers and 5 Noopsyches. The same lighting I use on the 180. No more bulb changes.

Any idea what could fail a bunch of ballasts in 2 different fixtures on 2 different circuits but not bother anything else? I opened the MH ballast and it looks new inside.
The cords are all intact. No visible scorch marks anywhere.

Mind blown.
 
It could be a lot of things - I would def get a meter and test at the panel
Leg 1 -> G
Leg 2 -> G
Leg 1 -> N
Leg 2 -> N
Leg 1 - Leg 2
N -> G
Voltages - all at the panel.

Then at the receptacle test leg-ground, neutral-ground, and leg-ground voltages.

I would check to see what leg each circuit was on.

A bad neutral can do weird things, as can a power surge.

Possible causes - given the ballast topology, it is possible that a voltage surge or spike damage the bulbs and ballasts, but nothing else in the house. If there are transformer/coil ballasts then overvoltage would overdrive the bulbs and possibly damage the caps or chokes, killing bulbs and ballasts.

Also possible that a bad neutral or neutral anomaly (missing for a short period from pole feed) could have caused these to feed leg to ground for some reason (again not sure of ballast topology) and burned stuff up.

Lastly - brown out condition - where there bulbs try to draw current that isn't there. Could damage bulbs and ballasts.. other stuff in the house happily ran at the lower voltage due to minimal current draw (clocks, etc).
 
BeanAnimal said:
It could be a lot of things - I would def get a meter and test at the panel
Leg 1 -> G
Leg 2 -> G
Leg 1 -> N
Leg 2 -> N
Leg 1 - Leg 2
N -> G
Voltages - all at the panel.

Then at the receptacle test leg-ground, neutral-ground, and leg-ground voltages.

I would check to see what leg each circuit was on.

A bad neutral can do weird things, as can a power surge.

Possible causes - given the ballast topology, it is possible that a voltage surge or spike damage the bulbs and ballasts, but nothing else in the house. If there are transformer/coil ballasts then overvoltage would overdrive the bulbs and possibly damage the caps or chokes, killing bulbs and ballasts.

Also possible that a bad neutral or neutral anomaly (missing for a short period from pole feed) could have caused these to feed leg to ground for some reason (again not sure of ballast topology) and burned stuff up.

Lastly - brown out condition - where there bulbs try to draw current that isn't there. Could damage bulbs and ballasts.. other stuff in the house happily ran at the lower voltage due to minimal current draw (clocks, etc).
Click to expand...
The 2 circuits are on different legs because they are on consecutive breakers in the box and that is how it's made.
Most of the other stuff mentioned would trip out our transfer switch, start the generator and disconnect the house from the grid. That didnt happen. I would get a text on my phone. Our service entrance is in excellent condition and was just gone through by the electricians that installed the 32 kw generator.

I understand what you are saying but I think any of those things would have taken out at least one or more of the sensitive electrical items in the house.

There weren't even any storms that day so no lightening.
 
Sorry as stupid as it sounds and no offense meant...but did you check your non-working bulbs? i.e. did you replace them with known working bulbs? It is strange that only x out of x on the same circuit would fry.....not the usual ground fault blowouts...unless they are daisy chained
 
The common denominator here is the ballasts.

If they are all the same topology, then it was more than likely a voltage related event.

I am not sure what brand of 32kW genset and transfer switch you have or what the start/transfer threshold (voltage and duration) are.

I would guess that you will find all of the ballasts have the same failed component.

Also transients/spikes. Large spike or series of spikes or frequency ripple or insanely out of sync power factor can cause different devices bahave in different ways. Ballasts are high current high frequency devices. A large spike or series of spikes can be insanely amplified through the ballast both due to the transformer amplifying the voltage or the RC circuit behaving in a damaging way to both the bulbs and the ballast. The other devices in the home just shrugged it off due to their topology.

The ballasts in effect could have even absorbed (again to due to their topology) the spike - in-effect protecting other devices.

None of these would be seen or reacted to by the generator logic.
 
Last edited:
OldReefGuy said:
It is strange that only x out of x on the same circuit would fry.....not the usual ground fault blowouts...unless they are daisy chained
Click to expand...

Not at all strange, even though it feels like it should be.

Be it brownout, overvoltage, frequency drift, surge/transient or insanely skewed power factor, it is common to see what you would consider "robust" equipment fry and "fragile" equipment just keep humming away. I think in this case, the easily identifiable commonality is that there are ballasts that (by design) are already pushing the envelop of their component parameters and the bulbs attached to them.

Ballast failures are notorious indicators of otherwise unseen or observed power quality issues.
 
BeanAnimal said:
Not at all strange, even though it feels like it should be.

Be it brownout, overvoltage, frequency drift, surge/transient or insanely skewed power factor, it is common to see what you would consider "robust" equipment fry and "fragile" equipment just keep humming away. I think in this case, the easily identifiable commonality is that there are ballasts that (by design) are already pushing the envelop of their component parameters and the bulbs attached to them.

Ballast failures are notorious indicators of otherwise unseen or observed power quality issues.
Click to expand...
Which is part of why I decided to no longer use them. Searching not required.
I am not sure how much commonality there is between a florescent tube and MH ballast. I also looked for parts and not much is out there.
I will probably fix them but there is no rush now.
 
wvned said:
Which is part of why I decided to no longer use them. Searching not required.
I am not sure how much commonality there is between a florescent tube and MH ballast. I also looked for parts and not much is out there.
I will probably fix them but there is no rush now.
Click to expand...
All magnetic Cap/coil?
 
I have zero electrical knowledge, so I will start there. However, I do try to look at problems (whatever they may be) rationally. If you had several electrical devices fail at the same time, I would attribute it to some type of anomaly in the electrical system (surge, spike, whatever). The fact that other devices may not have been impacted in the same way wouldn't change my opinion. I believe Bean's analysis of the ballast topology would make sense, regardless of whether it was two types of ballasts. The principal of a damaging event would be the same.
 
OldReefGuy said:
Sorry as stupid as it sounds and no offense meant...but did you check your non-working bulbs? i.e. did you replace them with known working bulbs? It is strange that only x out of x on the same circuit would fry.....not the usual ground fault blowouts...unless they are daisy chained
Click to expand...
I tried new tubes in the T5. The MH lamp worked when I swapped the ballast. Standard troubleshooting.
I expected to get 10 years of use out of the fixtures without significant failure and accepted bulb changes. Also I have had significant failures of new T5 and MH bulbs either out of the box or after a short time. It all added up.
LED works fine so I copied what I put over the 180 and will use that.
 
BrianD said:
I have zero electrical knowledge, so I will start there. However, I do try to look at problems (whatever they may be) rationally. If you had several electrical devices fail at the same time, I would attribute it to some type of anomaly in the electrical system (surge, spike, whatever). The fact that other devices may not have been impacted in the same way wouldn't change my opinion. I believe Bean's analysis of the ballast topology would make sense, regardless of whether it was two types of ballasts. The principal of a damaging event would be the same.
Click to expand...
I agree with you. Instead of racking my brain on how to find and prevent it again I decided to swap to equipment that wasn't effected the first time.
That seemed a better long term plan than trying stuff and waiting for it to happen again. You would almost need logging recorders to find what is happening. We have been here 5 years and this was the first event. They may happen more often or never again?

I have no skills at troubleshooting high voltage stuff like ballasts.
 
wvned said:
Hamilton electronic selectable wattage.
Click to expand...
Narrows it down even more ;)

They all behaved in the same fashion due to the same power issue.

I would still do the voltage check for the following simple reason.

If you are marginally high (or low) over a long period of time, the stress can damage certain classes of devices. Then a smaller surge, brownout etc. can be the the straw that breaks the camels back so to speak. The real cause is the out of spec power, not the normally non-consequential event that finally did them in. So you can do a voltage check, what you can't do is an actual power study (frequency, power factor, ripple, etc.). You would be amazed at how terribly dirty the power in some areas is. Bad substation gear, a local business or factory skewing power factor and nobody knows or cares to compensate, a bad transformer on the pole, some nitwit next door with 20 metal halides lamps over his aquarium etc.
 
OldReefGuy said:
yes strange indeed ....usually the cap's blow out first...
Click to expand...
Or something as simple as they were all manufactured with the same bad batch of electroyltics or voltage regulator caps that have dried out over the years and a small power surge caused the parts to fail and the ignitor circuits to pulse until bulbs failed and ballasts failed.

In the past I would have loved to dig in and figure it out... these days, straight to the trash can.
 
Now I scanned through most of this, (I'm old, I'll never get the time back, but know enough about ballasts and home power systems to blow something up). First, was anyone home when anything came on or went off.
 
Misled said:
Now I scanned through most of this, (I'm old, I'll never get the time back, but know enough about ballasts and home power systems to blow something up). First, was anyone home when anything came on or went off.
Click to expand...
Just Jill and I here now. We went out.
I know enough to wire up a fish room, telephone system or computer network. I saw some really odd things lighting and power hits did back when I worked. All the outlets on 2 20 amp circuits are full with mostly electronic stuff. 1 outlet on each circuit appears behind the tank. Each light fixture has 5 cords and were plugged in on each end of the tank on both circuits but some crossed. That way all the blue T5 bulbs and fans came on first then white and MH later. These lights are on outlet strips controlled by Hydros for on off control.

Perhaps this is just a big coincidence they all failed together. The cosmos is telling me to get LEDs.
 
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