On Jun 23, 12:11*am, "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:
In article ,
* *The Other Mike wrote:

The other half of the site has 5ft T5's with magnetic
ballasts fed by a Honda EU20i generator which despite being a quiet
suitcase model and loads of additional soundproofing is still way too
noisy. *Near silent operation is essential. *Hauling fuel is also a
PITA as its a long way from the road.
So I need a way of powering the 5ft T5's (58W) from a low voltage DC
supply. *IOTA only make ballasts up to 40W and they need a circa 50v
supply, realistically I need to keep to 12v to keep the solar array
price down.

My feeling is that magnetic ballast mains florries fed via an inverter
would be very little more efficient than 12 volt halogen lighting.

electronic invertors get over 90% efficiency, the difference between
the 2 is huge