I have a double ended MH lamp in 70W. It is an Osram PowerBall. I haven't gotten around to lighting it, but I might soon, but I need to find a suitable fixture first. Anyways, back to the subject, I have seen some M85 ballasts on eBay that specifically say it is to be used for double ended lamps and should not be used for single ended standard MH lamps. I have always assumed that M98 ballasts would be suitable for this, and I have a couple of them and intended to use one of those (M98). Now I am confused as to what I can use for this double ended lamp.

So the question here is can a double ended 70W MH lamp can be used with M98 ballasts ? The lamp came from Germany (from a German seller on eBay) and so is not labelled for the North American market. There are no ANSI codes on neither the packaging nor the lamp.

Many thanks.

No, the lamp should not be used with the M98 ballast as it is not electrically compatible. According to Sylvania, this control gear is for the 0.9 A /70 W MH lamps, which are indeed of the single-ended kind filled with sodium and scandium iodides. The proper ballast for your Osram HCI PowerBall 70W is the M85, designed for an operation at a higher discharge current (1.0 A).

Merci pour les conseils.

I have seen some electronic ones on eBay, I might get one because magnetic gear here is quite large with an obligatory capacitor etc and it most likely won’t fit into whatever fixture I intend to make.

De rien