Lighting question??

[loneranger]

Hi,
On my nano I run a 36w power compact tube, I've just noticed though that the ballast says 18w. Apart from the tube taking 5mins or so to brighten up the light sems to work perfectly well. But just had a thought, it it only putting out 18w of light, or is it running at the full 36w tube power? Worse still, could the colour temp of the light be effected?
any thoughts?
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[melosu58]

Moved to General Hardware and equipment discussion.

 

[loneranger]

OOps sorry. Thanks for the move!

 

[jsoong]

Depends on what the ballast is (is the 18 W marked on the fixture, or the ballast itself?) .... An electronic load sensing ballast will put out enough watts up to the max rating, and prob can go over a bit as well. If the bulb is lighting up, it should be getting closer to 36 W than 18 ... it might be 30 of so. <I don't know the limits for the T5 PC's, but the T8/12's will not light if the ballast is more than 10-20% underpowered.>

I don't know what lowering the wattage supplied to the bulb will do to the spectrum. I suspect that it will be different, and prob. shifted to the red end.