I've been reading over in diyaudio about the use of a home depot/lowes lutron-type dimmer switch in trying to regulate a 110v to operate a 82v enx/fxl bulb. I posed this assumption but I'd like to know if it has merit whatsoever...

Incoming is 110v so at the bottom of the dimmer slide one would get 0 volts and at the top end of the slide you would have 110v. That these dimmers could handle 600w or 1000w means that one could light up 10 60w bulbs or 10 100w bulbs to go off one dimmer safely.

That the FXL bulb is rated at 400w means one dimmer could handle this and the trick is simply to measure along the scale where it reaches 82v and stop there. And how would use the multimeter- I have very little experience with this, sadly.

Victor

I would be concerned about this as a long term solution, since these things tend to drift in value.

Also, generally what dimmer switches do is cut phases in the AC waveform, and not actually diminish the voltage at all. This is why dimmer switches don't work for fan speed control for AC fans. You'd need to experiment.

You can pset your multimeter on AC voltage, to measure, but I don't think that it's going to do what you think that it is.