Philips 'Iridium' SGS 252

Lantern acquired in March 2007.

Another Iridium - and another Cosmopolis one at that! This is also another lantern that Derby City Council standardised on - the 45 Watt was the lantern of choice for lower column heights in 2007, and saw widespread use for residential streets in the early years of the City's Street Lighting PFI.

The deep polycarbonate bowl became the standard optic type on the PFI Iridiums, and is used on this example too.

 

The blob of brightness adjacent the photocell is actually from this lantern's big brother - the 150 Watt CDM-TT SGS 253.

The CosmoWhite lamp can be seen within the lantern's IP66-rated optic.

A figured aluminium reflector encases the lamp. Much of the internal wiring is concealed behind plastic covers and heat-resisting insulation sleeves.

The lamp control gear comprises a one-piece electronic ballast. This has a feature whereby it can diagnose its own faults.

The self-diagnosis works as thus: an LED just above the 'lamp' connections will flash at different rates depending on what the fault is - if it flashes once a second, the lamp has failed. If, however, it flashes at 2x a second, the ballast has failed. If it stays lit constantly, the system is operating correctly. The only (slight) problem I have thought of with this system is that the canopy has to be closed for the lantern to work, meaning that viewing the LED's state would be tricky - the safety terminal block could, of course, be bypassed, but I don't think Philips would recommend doing this!

The internal identification label states that the lantern was made in January 2007 (A7) at the manufacturing plant in Lyon, France (MR).


The lantern was fitted to an AC Ford AC 872 wall bracket on Saturday, 28th April 2007 and was then duly powered up. Being this close to the lantern whilst it was operating meant that there was no discernable difference from the 45 Watt lamp compared to the 60 Watt version.

Lamp warm-up video:

Testing with my energy monitoring device revealed the following results:

Test Voltage (V) Current being drawn at full power (A) Measured wattage (W) Apparent Power (VA) Frequency (Hz) Power Factor True Power (W) Difference to rated wattage Percentage Difference
238.1 0.21 48 50 49.9 0.95 47.50 2.5 6%

Thorn Beta 79 | Thorn Johanna 1


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