Electronic Ballast for Fluorescent Lamp

Abstract

Though the history of lamps are almost as long as that of electricity and various kinds of lamps have been developed, those with high efficiency have not been invented yet. Among others, the fluorescent lamp is in the limelight due to its relatively reasonable efficiency and, thus, is most widely used nowadays. The fluorescent lamps, however, require high voltages at the beginning of the lighting instant as in the cases of the other discharge tubes, and maintain almost constant voltages during the lighted interval, which makes it difficult to light the lamps with good efficiency. Many approaches have been developed to light the fluorescent lamps with good efficiency since the invention of lamps. However, the conventional choke ballasts developed in early days are still considered to be the most popular ones nowadays in spite of their many shortcomings for reasons of technical difficulties and economics of other methods.