Thats interesting how they have different date codes though

Today I found some 36w and 40w lamps branded as "Ecolink" with green sleeves. It turns out, they are just rebranded philips lamps.
Firstly, on the sleeve it says "made by Signify (formerly philips lighting)".
Secondly, the tubes are very similar to philips tubes, down to the etch layout, endcaps, and date code.



Ecolink TL 40w/54
Ecolink TL 36w/54
Philips TL 40w/54
Philips TL 36w/54

Unfortunately not, I went through my photos and found nothing. Maybe there's a possible the school district wanted a discount so Philips sold off some old stock to them? Or just low quality stock? But I think its definitely from 2010 because the lights were relamped in 2021 with authentic Alto F32T8/TL-741s and GEs.

If it were foreign, I'm not sure if would have an order code. I'm not really familiar with foreign lamps but they don't usually have order codes on them. Plus essentially all new Philips lamps have dark solid etches.

Purplish xenon color, and than LPS orange color.

What color do regular HPS lamps start up with?

Mercury free HPS lamps can cycle, but rarely. Have much yellower color than standard HPS lamp.
High xenon pressure HPS lamps can cycle, but rarely. Runs up much faster than regular HPS lamp.
Unsaturated HPS lamps are the non-cycling HPS lamp. Runs up bluish mercury. have stable voltage over life.
Regular HPS lamps can cycle.
I think that European HPS lamps aren't compatible with CWA ballast for HPS lamps as well.

Al is better conductor per weight (measured as resistance of given length of wire with each of such thickness so both have the same weight; because Al has about 3.3x lower density, for the same mass it will be 3.3x thicker cross section, so even with about 1.6x higher specific resistivity it yields about 2x lower resistance of that wire), not dimension (cross section).
Because with ballast what matters is the volume, not weight, because that dictates how heavy the core would be (larger volume for the winding means taller the ballast core legs, so more steel in them, so the total weight or cost saving won't offset the larger ballast size).
But some ballasts were made using aluminum wire, mainly US HX and CWA's, the calculation probably made it seem worth.
The main problem with AL for winding I would see the inherent fragility of the Al wire, moreover when that thin, resulting into reliability problems. And these problems then are not worth the savings, even if those were real.

Just searched the message boards and there is a lot of contradicting information. I have heard of the following HPS lamp types, some of which have been claimed to have non-cycling behavior:
- Mercury Free HPS
- High xenon pressure HPS
- Unsaturated HPS
- Regular HPS

What are the characteristics of these lamps? Which ones cycle and which ones don't? How do I identify them?

All of the HPS street lights near me are mercury-blue colored when they first strike, but my Ignitron lamp is white when it strikes. So obviously there are at least two types of HPS that are distiguishable by startup behavior.

What are these lamps marketed as? I have heard of Philips Alto non-cycling HPS lamps, what category do they fall under? Never knew there were so many different types.

Are unsaturated lamps ever used outside of retrofit lamps?

Also do these lamps have anything to do with the whole HPS CWA compatibility mystery? (they say that saturated HPS retrofit lamps are incompatible with CWA MV ballasts, yet HPS CWA ballasts exist)

Thanks!

Something was rubbing against it...

What caused them?