Re: low voltage & bulb species

From: Eugene Leitl (Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Fri Jul 06 2001 - 04:38:11 MDT


On Fri, 6 Jul 2001, Damien Broderick wrote:

> I reveal my elementary ignorance: do fluoros work if you lower the voltage?

They might, but once you go below the ignition threshold they'll just sit
there dark. Might even damage ignition circuit.

Driving anything out of specs is a *BAD* idea. Most devices are not smart
enough to cut off when power goes out of bounds.

> I have a couple of dandy little long-life 15-watt lamps = 75 watt
> incandescent or maybe 100 watt, but they are explicitly said not to work
> with a standard light-dimmer rheostat.

Of course, thyristors hack your nice slow sinus into lots of rapidly
ramping-up pulses. It's a duty cycle thing essentially; how many on vs.
off states of the waveform available (typically, AC sinus). Anything but
classic ohm load doesn't like this one bit.

-- Eugen* Leitl leitl
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