Quote:
Forgot about the Venture ballast. It has a rated power factor of .9 drawing 4.55 amps
|
You just discarded the most efficient of the ballasts. .9 means it is 90% efficient. .8 is 80% efficient.
And pf is entirely determined by the LOAD after the supply arrives a your home. Not by the Utility company. If that were the case then all the large electricity users such as manufactiring would be getting screwed royally. They pay depending upon how good or bad the powerfactor they are running. Less than 75% they pay almost 20% surcharges(if I remember right). That is why all large end users try to adjust the pf of thier shop to as close to equality as possible. 1.0 or 100%. This is done by finding out whether they are running and inductive or capacitive shop and then adjust accordingly with capacitor banks etc.
Unless you are wanting to run many many units of a NPF ballasts, I wouldn't worry that much about whether you buy a HPF or an NPF. the differences between the two in this case where you are running one maybe two ballasts aren't going to be so extreme as to make a huge difference in our montly bill. That warning that you saw regarding running many NPF ballasts is generally only found in large end users. Not home use. If you were to start drawing so much power that you were up in that category the cops would be visiting you very shortly looking for a grow op. And a BIG one at that.
The amount of money you will save if you are running one ballast of the same wattage where one is a .8 NPF and the other is a .9 HPF ballast will end up being counted in the cents per MONTH ie. Less than one dollar. Basically PF in this hobby will not have a drastic effect on savings going back into your pocket. If you are already running or intend to run a 400W ballast the difference will not noticeable.
Basically, buy the ballast that works how you want it to or works the best. Don't go buy a .5 mind you. But the .1 you are talking about doesn't have that big a change. We aren't high end consumers of electricity. When you measure your daily use in the hundreds of kilowatts or more then start worrying about pf. Here it is a waste of time. You could be enjoying a beer with the energy you are putting into finding out all this info.