Halides shut off when a/c kicks on?

[enderg60]

So Ive had a very rare issue where when my a/c kicks on, or my tv turns on my halides will shut off and the ballasts will start to hum loud until I unplug them and plug them back in.

Well its now doing this a few times a day at minimum and I have no clue what its happening. I have tried moving the lights to different circuits but it didnt work.

Any ideas?

 

[acroholic]

Electric or magnetic ballasts?

 

[enderg60]

magnetic. PFO HQI 400w's 3 of them.

Should mention they are triggered with a AC3 that trips a secondary high amp relay.

 

[acroholic]

Guessing it is related to the AC3. A couple times my halides with mag ballasts have done the same thing when I put my MP60s into feed mode, controlled by my RKE.

Maybe unrelated, at the same time I had been seeing Georgia Power in the area. We periodically get these tiny little power blips that don't affect most things, but rarely it can play havoc with a controller power strip.

 

[johniii]

Do you have a volt meter and amp meter?

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[acroholic]

Not an electrician by any means, but halides have a certain lower limit, I am guessing wattage, but it could be amperage, they can operate at, and any thing lower than that is equal to a power shutoff, in which the ballast initiates a timed minimum off period so the bulbs cool down to avoid damage to them.

You can actually run a 400 watt halide at 250 watts. Can't start it with 250 watts, but once on and warmed up you can dim it a pretty good deal until it reaches that cutoff point.

I would guess something is initiating that with Daniel's lights either through the controller or the relay(s) he has the lights hooked into. First thing I would do is look for corrosion or salt creep in the plug areas of the relay or controller power strip, just to get any obvious causes first.

AC units have a large initial amperage spike, which makes me think of the above. TVs not so much, but the do have a spike as well.

 

[rdnelson]

Acroholic;960788 wrote: Not an electrician by any means, but halides have a certain lower limit, I am guessing wattage, but it could be amperage, they can operate at, and any thing lower than that is equal to a power shutoff, in which the ballast initiates a timed minimum off period so the bulbs cool down to avoid damage to them.

You can actually run a 400 watt halide at 250 watts. Can't start it with 250 watts, but once on and warmed up you can dim it a pretty good deal until it reaches that cutoff point.

I would guess something is initiating that with Daniel's lights either through the controller or the relay(s) he has the lights hooked into. First thing I would do is look for corrosion or salt creep in the plug areas of the relay or controller power strip, just to get any obvious causes first.

AC units have a large initial amperage spike, which makes me think of the above. TVs not so much, but the do have a spike as well.

Very close but it is voltage. The ballast cannot start the lamp when it is hot which is why there is a delay in restarting them in a short power outage. I suspect, that the power company is having brown out issues in your neighborhood. A brown out is when the load put on the system starts to overload it cause the voltage to drop. With a low initial voltage, it is harder for the AC to start lowering the voltage through the house even more. If your home is old, the infrastructure feeding the house and the wiring in the house itself was sized for the days when we used a fraction of the electricity we now use.


I know you all think I have no heart but now I have an ultrasound to prove it.

 

[enderg60]

alrighty Ill try putting a UPS on it.

And yes i have a voltmeter and amp meter

 

[johniii]

EnderG60;960998 wrote: alrighty Ill try putting a UPS on it.

And yes i have a voltmeter and amp meter

Was gonna have you test for voltage drop. But the ups sounds like the fix

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[enderg60]

welp borrowed a small UPS from work to test things and it worked....right up until the 3rd halide came on and it started smoking and its breaker popped lol.

Guess I will have to find a bigger one.

 

[enderg60]

And my search for a UPS that can handle 15 amps comes up short unless I want to spend $200 so time to find another solution.

 

[johniii]

What about three small ones

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