The primary visual difference between them is that metal halide light is white and the light emitted from a high pressure sodium bulb is amber orange.
Can you put a high pressure sodium bulb in a metal halide fixture.
And in your case you need not one but two special fixtures.
In principle one must use metal halide ballasts for the corresponding metal halide lamp.
Stick the hps stuff in the bin and invest in an icecap.
In practice we have used sodium vapour ballasts for metal halide lamps without problems for years.
No metal halide lamps require the electrical operating characteristics that the associated metal halide ballast produces.
High pressure sodium bulbs lamps are an old standby for lighting that s still used today in spite of so much talk of led lights.
These bulbs cannot be interchanged without changing their ballast the regulating element in all light bulbs.
Whilst you can stick the lamp with the hps sodium gear you will not get the correct colour temperature due to lamp not being at correct operating temperatures and you will drastically shorten the lifespan of it.
While upgrading to led provides a lot of benefits high pressure sodium hps lamps still provide some of the most efficient lighting available.
But the converse is not true.
Their operation is a bit different and they therefore require different ballasts.
Does that mean that i can t or shouldn t replace the original 70 watt hps with say a 100 watt bulb assuming it was the same size and would.
A high pressure sodium lamp requires a ballast to operate and a metal halide.
In fact they re roughly as efficient as leds in terms of their light output for each watt of energy used.
No metal halide lamps require the electrical operating characteristics that the associated metal halide ballast produces.
The ballast is specific to the type of vapor and wattage.
A high pressure sodium ballast also is equipped with an igniter used to.
Light like maybe a metal halide bulb or is the ballast in this fixture specific and can only with with high pressure sodium bulbs.
A high pressure sodium bulb produces light that is reddish yellow while metal halide bulbs produce a much more balanced white light that has more of the visual spectrum.