Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 6:14 pm
Hi,
Back when I wanted to do this I did a little light reading on the subject before hand.
I had hanging fixtures so I went and replaced with like kind in the new version.
I'm going to do this from memory so please check my numbers.
The old ballasts were basically a large inductor, they were large, heavy and you could expect a major loss in them do to the power factor being very poor (current and voltage out of phase). This loss could be 20% or even 25%.... Even in the best of worlds it is still something like 5%. Later they added a capacitor to help correct the power factor so depending on how old your stuff is???
The one we now call electronic ballast is what I switched to, it is a very different system. First the old system was 60 cycle based, the new ones are operating at 20,000. Why do that? Well the lamps are more efficient by at least 9% at that frequency. The higher frequency also lets them use capacitors rather then inductors, capacitors are less of a loss then inductors and you get still better efficiency. The flicker is gone as a plus (the lamps do not have to re-arc).
Ed
Back when I wanted to do this I did a little light reading on the subject before hand.
I had hanging fixtures so I went and replaced with like kind in the new version.
I'm going to do this from memory so please check my numbers.
The old ballasts were basically a large inductor, they were large, heavy and you could expect a major loss in them do to the power factor being very poor (current and voltage out of phase). This loss could be 20% or even 25%.... Even in the best of worlds it is still something like 5%. Later they added a capacitor to help correct the power factor so depending on how old your stuff is???
The one we now call electronic ballast is what I switched to, it is a very different system. First the old system was 60 cycle based, the new ones are operating at 20,000. Why do that? Well the lamps are more efficient by at least 9% at that frequency. The higher frequency also lets them use capacitors rather then inductors, capacitors are less of a loss then inductors and you get still better efficiency. The flicker is gone as a plus (the lamps do not have to re-arc).
Ed