Today, I as usual, went with my father to Mai-Wok asian restaurant in Hataasia street, at Nesher.
This street is full of GE M250R2 drop lens cobraheads, most of them have 250W HPS lamps, but few are 250W mercury lamps.
When we enter the street today, at a coincidence, the streetlighting turned on.
Guess what: The mercury GE M250R2 glowed an intense 3000K halogen color light! (Instead of the usual dim pink or magenta color of a regular deluxe white mercury lamp)
Initially, i thought that these are MH lamps generally (Most MH lamps also glows 3000K color when initially turned on, because of their electrodes glowing). However, their halogen color was much brighter than the initial color of the HPS lamps When they turned on, in fact too bright to be MH lamps. So i have discovered that these mercury M250R2, actually not contains mercury lamps, but SBMV lamps! (Yes, 250W E40 SBMV lamps)
Unfortunately, my GP Recyko+ LSD NiMH AA batteries of my camera, became dead, as my camera refused to operate and displayed "Change the batteries", despite i charged then several days ago, so i have no pictures of one the M250R2 with the 250W SBMV turning on. And as we moving to a summer clock, i don't think that i will have a chance to see these lanterns turning on again. Hope that their SBMV will survive until the next chance.

This is unusual to see SBMV lamps is streetlighting. I only encountered a few such extreme example in my life:
1. In the very far past, in Givat Brenner local council, i saw in a main road SCHREDER DM 3 lanterns. Most of them, were HPS, but few of them were 250W E40 SBMV, that initially thought to be HPS that stuck in between mercury and sodium color, but turned out to be SBMV, when i saw them turning on (They later relamped to HPS lamps).
2. In The Meginim street in Haifa, i saw when i was a child, one old version of the Koffer 150, that had a 160W SBMV, when the streetlighting turned on (All of the lanterns in this area are today Philips Stradasole 530 with 150W HPS lamps).
3. When i was a child, and i was in Boris Milman center for autistic children, when this center was in its older place in the Parsim street, the building in front of it, had two floodlights: One Gaash Zohar with what i thought to be an 400W mercury lamp (Because of its elliptical coated shape and pinkish color when lit), and one farther Gaash Jupiter with a MH lamp. However, when i saw these two floodlights turned on, the mercury lamp in the Gaash Zohar, turned out to be a 500W E40 SBMV, as instead of a dim magenta or pink color, as usual from a yttrium vanadate coated mercury lamp, my eyes being blinded quite unexpectedly by an unusually intense, blindery bright 3000K halogen color light that came from the Gaash Zohar floodlight.
4. When I was in Yotvata In The City restaurant in the far past, near the lower station of Stella Maris cable railway and Bat Galim promenade, i saw the 400W lowbays of the station turning on. One of the lowbays had a HPS lamp, and the rest were mercury. One of the mercury lowbays, glowed an intense 3000K halogen color instead of the pink color of the rest of the mercury lowbays, indicating that it have a 500W E40 SBMV lamp.
In all four example, i knew zero in lighting and i was a child or teen, despite this field already interested me, but as i remember these cases good, i know which lamps were in each fixture in each examples.

It is not likely that they are 250W SBMV

A SBMV is way less efficient than normal MV. So if they really are SBMV, they must give little light for their size when at full power

The life of SBMV is not long. They must be no older than few years. I think 250W SBMV's are not available for long, and there is nowhere to get the lamps (only widely available SBMV is 160W). To that add that the lamps are horizontal burning position which would shorten their life even more. And if those would be 160W SBMV's, they would give really little light

It would take more effort to find 250W SBMV's than to throw in a ballast and use ordinary HPS when relamping the fixtures



If the light output is low they might be 160W SBMV's

But i think of other options :

MV with odd phosphor that gives 3000K color under UV, then shifts to more normal MV olor as the arc tube emits more visible light

Very old HPS that lost allmost all of the sodium and gives MV'ish color (maybe some tint of yellow from remaining sodium)

Then, the lamp color which is lightly yellowish, may appear 3000K on the background of blue sky, and white in darkness (and compared to distinct yellow HPS'es in other fixtures around)



There are 2 tests that could tell :

Is there flicker in the beginning ? SBMV starts like incandescent so is supposed to have little flicker compared to HID. You can test that by taking a photo and rapidly moving the camera when it is taken

Is there audible ballast hum when you put your ear on the pole ? If no then either there is no ballast (so SBMV) or it is silent (compare to other poles around that definitely have ballast to see how noisy they are)

Ash: The lamps in the mercury M250R2s, were for sure 250W E40 SBMV lamps, as these M250R2, have E40 sockets. If the mercury lamp, glows an intense halogen color, so they are SBMV. When they are at full power, they looks like ordinary mercury lamps.
In 2003, when i learned in Safririm special education regional school in Kibbutz Givat Hayim Icud, i saw at the sports center, several simple antique lanterns (I think similar to the mercury ones that the facilities of the refineries of Haifa uses), that had 250W E40 SBMV lamps.
I even saw 500W SBMV lamps some times when i was a child, like i wrote earlier in the topic.

Get yourself a handheld spectroscope, that will sort 'em out once and for all. Watch them with the spectroscope as they come up.

Get yourself a handheld spectroscope, that will sort 'em out once and for all. Watch them with the spectroscope as they come up.

See here for the run-up of one of the 250W SBMV lamps in one of the GE M250R2 cobraheads at Nesher.
I have no way to get a spectroscop in Israel.