The Lamp Room

What's everyone's opinion on Induction lighting?

To me they were the best lighting tech on the market as the appearance was very much like coated mercury lighting - Philips QL lamps, they still use them at Reading railway station to this very day thank goodness. The QL lamps wee used for LPA airport in Gran Canaria, sadly didn't get a pic as I was very poorly on the way back home

South Kensington area of London, nearby Royal Albert Hall have these induction streetlights with the rectangular shaped tubes . Oh and one of my uni halls had the lowbay lights with the same rectangular tubes in them

Saw some decent looking floodlights with the rectangular shaped tubes too - to sum it all up - MUCH BETTER THAN LED I WISH INDUCTION TOOK OVER INSTEAD OF THE WRETCHED LED

We had only the Chinese ring induction lamps, in Supermarkets, and at a highmast lanterns at Kiryat Ata.

Our Morrisons here lights the car park with them, not sure of the wattage, (probably 100?), but they don’t do a bad job of it.

It’s never interested me at all in any way whatsoever. I find LED more interesting LOL

I find them interesting that a simple magnetic field can be used in fluorescence, but they are still a glorified CFL?

The ring tube type of induction lamps do look like glorified CFLS to me whilst the Philips QL lamps look like MV reimagined

They're certainly interesting. Never saw very widespread use, but I still find the whole concept interesting. I own one induction floodlight, that's it tho.

They do certainly work well as a reimagined MV, the QLs run up is incredibly fast and the fact multiple colours could be made witch wasn’t possible with the MV type, made them a perfect replacement for European street lighting.
I remember asking years ago on LG, why the ‘then’, super efficient Tri-phosphorus that were being developed for CFL, couldn’t be used in the existing mercury lamps, only to find out that, sadly, they don’t work with a mercury discharge tube, and if they did, the heat from said tube would probably destroy the phosphor anyway!

I always found this a great shame as, can you have imagined what a boost of efficiency the mercury lamps would have got if Tri-phosphor was compatible with the tube?
We’d have definitely seen MV installations hanging on for a few more years!

I always found the QL's quite interesting, and they looked quite neat with their compact round shape.
Though they had the same drawbacks of LED with reliability, perhaps sometimes worse with how complex the drivers are. Still the triphosphor light quality of the 830 and 840 QL's gave them an edge over LED for a lot of the areas they were used.

It's an interesting bit of lighting technology that came and went very quickly. There were a couple of local, to me, petrol stations that had them in the canopy of their forecourts (now replaced for LED as part of general refurbishment works)
I have an induction street lamp in my collection, I did have a floodlight too though that stopped working after a very short time so was converted to metal halide, the old ballast and lamp are still kicking around.