China manufacturer of magnetic ballasts for metal halide flood lights & hps flood lights

These devices are basically switching power supplies that eliminate the large, heavy, magnetic ballast and replace it with an integrated high frequency inverter/switcher. Current limiting is then done by a very small inductor, which has sufficient impedance at the high frequency. Properly designed electronic ballasts should be very reliable. Whether they actual are reliable in practice depends on their location with respect to the heat produced by the lamps as well as many other factors.

Discharge lamps can only be operated with ballasts. Ignitors are additionally required for sodium lamps and metal halide lamps. Furthermore, to compensate blind current when using magnetic ballasts, compensation capacitors must be fitted. The lampholders enable the lamp to be fixed in the luminaire and ensure simple exchange of lamps at the end of their service life.

As well as stabilising the lamp´s operating point, ballasts also influence the lamp´s output and luminous flux, the system´s light output, the service life of the lamps as well as the colour temperature of the light.

Since electonic ballasts include rectification, filtering, and operate the tubes at a high frequency, they also usually eliminate or greatly reduce the 100/120 Hz flicker associated with iron ballasted systems. However, this is not always the case and depending on design (mainly how much filtering there is on the rectified line voltage), varying amounts of 100/120 can still be present.