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J

jimmys83

Hi There I am new to your forum and in dire need of a assistance.
So we are electricians in Australia and we are having a serious unsolvable issue with the fluro lights in a supermarket. There are about 200+ twin 36w fittings with OmniTronix electronic ballasts.
Now the issue we are having is the fluros work intermittently. Every time the lights are turned off and on again the lights that were not working will come on and others will not start. We original tried replacing the tubes, but this failed and we were left scratching our heads as we would remove the tubes and replace them and they would still not work while power was on, but when we turned power on and off some of these fittings would work and others would not. We could even take tubes from working fittings and replace them with ones that were not and they would still not work.
The next step was to replace the ballasts of the fittings that were not working. These were replaced with Tridonic Ballasts and still the same issue occurred even with new ballasts and tubes in the fittings.
We have tested the circuit’s voltage and voltage is up around 250v even at the end of the circuits.
We have spoken to OmniTronix who have told us that the possible issue may be the fact the tubes contain too little mercury and this in turn causes the problem with the alternate tubes used. We are waiting for specialty tubes (Radium) from Germany that could fix the issue but we do not see how this will as the problem even exists in the fittings with new tubes and new Tridonic ballasts.
Any help anyone can provide would be greatly appreciated.
 
Are they fed from a 3 phase board?

Has the neutral gone missing at the board?

You'll see 250v at the lights if the 3 phases are balanced, but it doesn't mean there's a neutral at the lights.

Had something similar recently and the neutral had been missing for years, only when the lighting was changed to electronic did the problems start.
 
Hi, welcome to the forum. I'm in agreement with Snowhead, it's most likely you have a floating neutral. The electronic ballasts will no longer have a reference potential and starting will be completely random, because the starting becomes entirely dependant on the point in the sinewave cycle at which the lamp is switched 'ON', as you have experienced.
 

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