ECN Forum Forums Photo Discussion Forums Electrical Nostalgia Old Ballast

You can tell it was made for the Niagra Falls area. Who else produced 25 hertz power?

Jezzz that is big sucker there i am sure that weight in pretty good in iron wise i dont recall to see the 25 HZ ballast for quite a while

Merci , Marc

There were lots of places with 25Hz power. But driving a fluorescent at that frequency? Ouch! Gives me a headache just to imagine it!

Didn't the Pensylvania (spelling?) Railroad use 11000VAC 25Hz for powering those big GG-1 electric locomotives? There was a steel mill that also used 25 Hz supply for the equipment (the name Bethlehem rings a bell-on the eastern side of the U.S.)

Sir Adam Beck in Niagara Falls still has 25 cycle generators. They have several industrial customers on both sides of the border that use it. I think they are trying to phase it out by not renewing the contracts as they expire.

Here's a great article, titled "The Frequency Changer Era", that discusses 25-cycle power:
http://services3.ieee.org/organizations/pes/public/2003/sep/peshistory.html

If you do a search on frequency, 25Hz etc. you'll find several threads where we've discussed the use of 25Hz in the past, and the fact that a few places in the U.S. once used 50Hz (e.g. Los Angeles area up until the 1930s).

One other thing I note about that ballast is the nominal voltage rating: 118V instead of the more usual 117V.

I allways thought that in lighting any frequency bellow 50Hz a flicker was noticable by the human eye?

The Canadian volts are not quite as large as the US, so it takes more of them.