With halogen lamps like any incandescents, small variation in power leads to huge variation in life. (Near the rated power, not in very dimmed states where the halogen cycle may do some villekulla). So just a little not too noticable dimming may resolve your lamp life problem



Failing other lamp formats, car headlights (H7 etc) are also halogen, fairly good performance and quality for what they are, and i dont think are banned anywhere

They have shorter rated life than "home" halogens, but if the other halogens you can use are of bad quality, a car lamp may outlast them even at full power

Same dimming vs. life consideration applies. You could run the lamps with a plain transformer or a switching power supply. The "metal mesh box" type ones have a small pot to calibrate the voltage, essentially a dimmer for your application

24V (truck) lamps are a little higher power than 12V ones for the same lamp format



With LEDs i have not seen any integrated luminaires that are even remotely acceptable

With screw in lamps there are 2000K-ish filaments (probably ordinary 2700K filaments inside, but the glass has a golden color to it). Those do reduce the blue light content to nearly none, they have fairly pleasant light, but fairly dim

Lamp life : The big names are not really avaliable in my area. I have had mostly good life with Eurolux (a local brand name which you probably dont have there anyway, they are "the better ones of the made in China" sort of lot), but not without some hit and miss too

In one case i have replaced the same lamp in the same socket 4 times in 4 successive days (each one of the first three lasted less than an hour cumulatively), the 4th one (which looks identical) lasted 7 years so far and keeps going...

Sure. I have two reserved at this point, if anyone else is interested.

I'm interested in the 100W PSMH can lights from the auditorium.

Indeed, but strangely the Navion isn't...

ITT/American Electric ballast. They had this choke style ballast with aluminum windings in the 70's, 80's and 90s.

Verdeons actually are discontinued now.

I’m not sure either. Not sure if this helps, but I have been using Ecosmart lamps as of late, though they are just regular ones, most being 2700K, one 3000K, and two 5000K.

I have a 2700K snowcone from 2020 that is has just about five years of use in a table lamp, used about three hours a day, but after that generation they made them even lighter, which I don’t like. They still had weight then that gave somewhat of an assurance on how quality would be but now they feel light as a feather unfortunately. I have two other snowcones in use, a 2700K in a closet light (installed in 2023 I think), and 5000K in a garage light (installed in 2022 I think) and those have been working good.

Their filament lamps have been good to me as well. I know you said you tried them but I’m not sure if you tried the ones I used (regular ones). I have some 2700K 60w (closet light) and 100w equivs (floor lamp) installed in December of 2023 and they have been going strong no issues. Along with a 100w equiv 3000K (installed in mid 2023 I believe, room light) and a pair of 5000K versions (outside lights that are D2D, Oct 2023 and Aug 2025). The October 2023 one is a notable one as before that, I was installing Feit filament LEDs and literally the longest I got one of those in those outside lights was a year and a half, no joke, and started getting those in 2018 (dumb I know).

As @HomeBrewLamps says, sourcing older LED lamps might be your way to go. I have 2700K 65w equiv GE BR30s and Feit BR30s from 2018 (kitchen), another from 2021 (kitchen sink), and Feit G25 40w and Great Value 40w equiv (2018, most of the GVs had failed over the years except two, bathroom), and the best ones, a pair of Feit Electric 85w equiv BR30s in 5000K, that have run D2D since January 2019 with no issues. I haven’t had failures from the lamps mentioned above except for the GVs. The only mass failures I had were with the Feit A19 60w and 100w equiv filament LEDs. The longest I got from one of those was I think three years, in a garage opener light out of all places. People trash on Feit but I have great experiences with some of their older LED lamps.

Home Depot is closer to where I live so that’s been where I’ve been getting my LED lamps lol. Can’t say anything about the other brands.

I am sure many of you are aware of the miniaturizations of MH lamps. Commonly available down to 20W and 15W, with prototypes being made down to 3w or maybe even lower (I think I remember seeing a 2w one here but I can't remember).

Recently while browsing Trad Lighting, I came across this post from Max detailing a 15W SON lamp, designed for use with 20W fluorescent chokes. This is very interesting, as I haven't ever heard of HPS below 35W before. As far as I am aware this is the smallest HPS lamp ever made, though feel free to prove me wrong, I would love to hear about it.

That leaves MV behind. The smallest MV lamp I have seen is the North American 40W H45 lamp whish isn't even that small. I would assume that any attempts to miniaturize it would be for scientific/microscopy applications rather than general lighting due to the poor efficiency. Has anyone heard of MV lamps under 40W? Any experimental designs?

@Medved
While yes these sockets were installed on 32A circuits, each socket itself was only rated to carry 13A maximum (the largest fuse that could be safely installed in a plug).

And yes I am making a lot of assumptions here. Assuming the plug has a fuse, assuming the pins are shrouded, assuming the socket is shuttered, etc. Assuming all of those conditions are true, this system is safe. But there is no way to ensure that, which is admittedly a problem.

@Michael
Type J seems relatively similar to others like H, K, N, and O. Often no safety shutters or fuses in the plugs. Which is usually not as much of a problem since the maximum circuit size is 23A (but more often just 16A), but the conductors in the cords seem to not reflect that, just like the US. At least they have shrouded pins, that is definitely a good thing.

Interesting note on three phase compatibility, I did not know that. I can see how that can be useful.

Problem is, the "screw in bulb" is maybe the most LED-hostile format in existence. Rather high intensity on small space, light emission in all directions, means there is not much space where to dissipate the heat. Filament concept works well, but only limited power, like up to 8W for really largeR SIZE bulb. And only when the fixture really allows free cooling air movement around the bulb, so open fixtures only.
With enclosed fixtures the limit is at about 4W, so we are at barely 600lm with the most efficient LEDs on the market (the power figure includes the driver losses), so not that much of light output.

Way better performance you get from purpose built LED lanterns (assume decent design and build quality, so likely not the cheapest trash on the market), but these tend to use propriatery parts, so hard to fix once fails, so you need a completely new lantern.
So more of a "creating a new installation", not a "what to put into existing fixture" thing.