MH Ballast Power Draws

[Slick Fork]

Hi there,

I was just wondering what the normal power draw should be on a magnetic ballast 250 watt DE bulb should be? I noticed tonight that one of the bulbs had blown a fuse on my profilux power bar so I hooked it up to a watt meter and found that it's drawing a consistent 420-430 watts after the start up phase. This seemed really high to me so I checked the other one and it's reading the same thing.

They're both factory magnetic ballasts on a geisseman fixture and the fact that they are both reading identical draws makes me want to rule out a faulty ballast (Pretty slim odds that both are pooched but you never know).

So, are these normal draws? I had been expecting in the neighbourhood of 300-350 but maybe I just pulled that number out of my butt.

Thanks