Ballast Bullets

www.lightingdesignlab.com

Ballasts are not sexy. They are, however, crucial to the success of the luminaires and lighting systems that require them. We've written about ballasts in the past, but from the inquiries we get, it seems time to briefly revisit this topic.

Flexibility

• Even though this is changing a bit with new multi-lamp, multi-volt ballasts, most ballasts can only run one (or two) lamp types and wattages, on one voltage. Installing the wrong lamp in a ballast can result in bad lighting, ruin lamps, ruin ballasts and may even be dangerous.

Starting Method (Fluorescent Electronic Ballasts)

• Instant Start: the most common type found because they use 2-3W less than rapid start. But is you have frequently switched (i.e. motions sensors) your lamp life may suffer.
• Rapid Start: not as common, uses more watts, so almost never used in rebate job although you may get longer lamp life.
• Programmed Start: originally designed to guard against end-of-life problems, they also start the lamps correctly. Save more energy than rapid start, and offer potentially dramatically longer lamp life (over 30,000 hours, even with motion sensors. The only ballast to use with T5HO systems.

HID

• Until fairly recently electronic ballasts for HID were too expensive to use and did not offer compelling energy savings for payback. But new systems for metal halide can make them competitive from an energy savings standpoint with T5H0 in heightceiling applications. Offers better lumen maintenance and lamp life.

New Generation

• Newer designs for ballasts (and lamps) have moved the energy consumption downward while raising ratings for lamp life upward without impacting lighting performance. These new lamp and ballast combinations mean that specifiers must begin to think about integrated lighting systems instead of just lamps and ballasts in order to get the best lighting performance and greatest energy savings. The new 'high-performance T-8' systems fall into this category.