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

High efficiency, high frequency electronic ballasts offer enhanced lighting performance and energy savings. The Electric Power Research Institute estimates that lighting consumes 20-25% of all electric power and that lighting energy accounts for 40% of the average commercial electric bill. The retrofit of existing facilities with modern lighting systems increases productivity and can save over one-half the energy of the original system.

Older ballasts were magnetic, rapidly they are losing ground to electronic ballasts. Also, older fluorescent bulbs were T12. Then, we had combination of magnetic ballasts and T12 bulbs. As I said, they lost to electronic ballasts and T8 bulbs. You simply may look at the numbers on the bulb to see if you have older T12, or newer T8 bulb. Another way, T8 bulbs are smaller in diameter ( 1 inch) in comparison to T12 (1.5 inches in diameter). To find the diameter simply divide the number by 8 and it gives you the diameter of the bulb. EX:  T12  12/8=1.5 inches

As I said older T12 bulbs and magnetic ballasts come together. But factories made some electronic ballast for T12 bulbs. They said lets make part of the package up to date. If someone still using old package "T12/ magnetic ballast" lets make it "T12/ELECTRONIC ballast". That is why today you see ballasts such as F96T12 in electronic form. IMPORTANT NOTE: If you want to change an old magnetic ballast with electronic ballast you ought to make some changes in wiring inside the fixture or it won't work.

A complete lighting system redesign may save more energy and reduce costs than simple lamp-to-lamp replacement as fewer fixtures/lamp/ballast combinations may be required.

Do not mix different lamp types in the same fixtures to avoid voltage and current imbalance and premature failure.

Standard ballasts more than five years old may fail when used with lower wattage lamps.

All fluorescent lamps, especially T8 lamps, must be supplied with a matching ballast.

T8 lamps produce better light and use less energy when combined with fluorescent ballast.