Hi,is there such thing as a 3-phase ballast? I would love to find a 230 or 480 volt 3ph MH,MV,or HPS ballast of any wattage. thanks.

I don't think so. Usually, ballasts made to be used in 3 phase systems run on 347V phase to neutral (Canada) and 277V phase to neutral (USA). There also exists 480V ballasts, but I believe these are mostly HID and used in outdoor lighting.

Most HID ballasts available nowadays are multi tap and have multiple voltage input leads. The ones in Canada are usually 120/208/347 whereas the ones in the USA are usually 120/277/480. Some are quad tap and feature an additional voltage.

Unless the lamp operates at DC behind a rectifier (either directly or indirectly), AC feed to any lamp is always a single phase. So nothing like "3 phase magnetic ballast" can even exist. Well, maybe except for really 3-phase lamps (3 or more main electrodes), but these things are really a thing of the distant past (virtually anything past 60's uses at least a  rectifier, which makes the ballast a kind of electronic) and definitely anything but general lighting.

Feeding something across 2 phases of a 3-phase feed (400V 1kW and above European systems) does not make that thing a "3-phase", it still remains a single phase thing...

All that being said, it was common in large HID or fluorescent installations using magnetic ballasts to wire the room in mixed sections on all three phases, so the flicker would sort of cancel out (=reduced flicker but not totally eliminated). All ballasts were single phase, but the three thirds of all of them were each on a separate phase.

What I have is a fluorescent lamp ballast for two phases 400V 50Hz. It’s a RS ballast for one Powergroove 215W lamp. They seem here always to run from such ballasts.

With fluorescents, there were 3 phase fixtures in use, having 3 circuits, each on its own phase. The intention was mainly to cancel out the stroboscopic effect, so allow more efficient (against incandescents) fluorescent lighting to be used along spinning machinery.

Yeah splitting a large group of fixtures in a single space between three phases was a thing both for flicker reduction during the days when magnetic ballasts were commonplace and for load balancing purposes. In theory you can equip a 3 or 6 lamp fluorescent fixture to have each lamp (or pair of lamps) fed from each phase for flicker reduction. Such a setup might have been used in spaces with a lot of rotating machinery.

I don't think single lamp three phase lighting systems ever left the experimental stage as 3 phase added a lot of complexity compared to just putting different single phase lights in a large installation on a separate phase.

There were three different wattages of experimental late-Soviet made 3-phase metal halide lamps. The design was a long arc-tube with four electrodes in line. Probably was driven with some asymmetrical 3 choke/transformer arrangement, but I suspect the details were unfortunately lost. Lamps are really huge and highly sought after by collectors. Nothing was made in serious quantities, of course.

As for 3-phase ballasts, it is quite common to have 3-phase feed for large power DC arc lamp ballasts. A huge bonus is that 3-phase bridge rectifier has a low voltage/current ripple by itself, lessening the need for bulky and expensive smoothing choke/capacitor banks.   

I don't think single lamp three phase lighting systems ever left the experimental stage as 3 phase added a lot of complexity compared to just putting different single phase lights in a large installation on a separate phase.

This is probably one of the gems of L-G !

Hello,
I have one three phase metal halide lamp with 3kW made by the moscow electric lamp factory (MELZ). This lamp was made in several size 2kW, 3kW, 6kW. It was used for industrial lighting, for greenhouses and other industrial applications. However these lamps were limited to the USSR. So yes there were three phase ballasts and three Phase lamps, however they are very rare and something that was not used extensively.

I think there wer a few of these lamps made and used around some applications in the USSR but I am uncertain about that.

best regards,

Alex

Alex, AFAIK these 3-phase MH lamps never left experimental stage and never were made in large quantities. To break a bubble, Soviets even never managed to make good quality in simple 1-phase  250-400W MH lamps in mass production, which are the most trivial ones of any MH lamp to do. Yes they attempted, there were some interesting demo installations in Moscow metro, but Soviet MH lamps suffered from poor reliability and large color shifts, and never gained sufficient popularity in use compared to the ubiquitous mercury lamps.

Hello,
thank you for the clarification. I found such a lamp on sale in ukrain. I send you a link in a PM, maybe it is of interest of you.

best regards,

Alex