Wow how cool! Never seen one before!

TCP cfls and adatotor is very common in USA but never seen on in 240 volt market.

Interesting. Sure I've seen these a couple of times in Ramada hotels before. The Grantham one most recently.

just bought two of these myself. one fits perfectly in my uplighter so will get pressed into service. the startup is either instant or sort of SRS fade in.

I'm tempted to get one of these but a have so far resisted as TCP have rather a bad name where quality and lifespan are concerned. I'll probably cave at some point in as it would be a nice collection piece and wouldn't get run for thousands of hours. 30w for a 22w sized tube does sound a bit much though. Have you measured the power this consumes with a meter?

i don't have that kind of gear to test power unfortunately. I've had pretty good results with TCP CFL's so far..

I've had one of these open and although the ballast is cheaply made, its not badly made and looks like it may last longer than you think.

It's pretty well vented and well distant from the heat from the tube, so could well last decently. I've used CFL ballasts remotely before for linear lamps and had them last far longer than many factory HF units! Heat seems to be what usually kills them in integral lamps.

Yes I actually have a 4w tube running off the ballast from a 7w cfl non stop for over a month now. That cfl was eol and the ballast is still going strong. However I did replace a load of the capacitors with high quality ones and redid all the soldering