by Shane Henson — May 28, 2012—Sentry Electric, a U.S.-based provider of standard and custom historic, antique exterior, and outdoor decorative lighting, has extended its broad offering of decorative luminaires with a new lamp/ballast combination that helps to reduce the luminaire’s total cost of ownership.
According the Sentry Electric, the new system, CosmoPolis, manufactured by Philips Lighting, offers a feature-laden economic alternative to a market that is challenged to justify the jump to LED (light-emitting diode) solid state lighting. CosmoPolis reduces energy consumption, reduces luminaire maintenance, and provides improved lighting as compared to traditional HID (high-intensity discharge) lamp sources.
The CosmoPolis system consists of a specially designed miniaturized metal halide lamp source in combination with a surge-protected electronic ballast. Working together for upwards of 30,000 hours, the lamp experiences far less degradation than is seen with magnetically ballasted systems.
CosmoPolis’s electronic ballast utilizes solid state technology. It experiences fewer ballast losses and offers improved power regulation to the lamp. This helps reduce the battering that lamps typically experience with thousands of on off cycles and thousands of hours of use, notes the company. Additionally, engineers from Philips took painstaking efforts to advance various aspects of the lamp’s design. This includes the arc tube’s size and shape, the electrical power connections, and the formulation of the halide salts within the arc tube.
Sentry Electric says CosmoPolis offers the following money-saving benefits:
- Extended lamp life of up to 30,000 hours;
- Reduced energy consumption with light output comparable to a 100W metal halide lamp;
- Reduced rate of lamp depreciation compared to other metal halide lamps; and
- Dimming options allowing integration with energy-saving lighting control systems.
Beyond saving money, CosmoPolis has many sustainability advantages as well, says the company. These include:
- Environmental friendliness by utilizing low levels of mercury in the lamps and by altogether eliminating the use of lead in the ballasts;
- Reduction in power consumption, which lowers emissions that contribute to global warming;
- Reduction in the size and weight of the lamp and ballast, which reduces the amount of scrap waste and reduces the costs of packaging and shipping; and
- Longer lamp life along with fewer relamping cycles, reducing the amount of scrap waste as well as diminishing the energy normally consumed in deploying maintenance vehicles.
- Reduction in power consumption, which lowers emissions that contribute to global warming;
