Lighting Ballasts & Drivers
In lighting design, an electrical ballast is a device placed in series with a load to limit the amount of current in an electrical circuit. A familiar and widely used example in fluorescent lighting is the inductive ballast used in fluorescent lamps to limit the current through the tube, which would otherwise rise to a destructive level due to the negative differential resistance of the tube’s voltage-current characteristic.
Ballasts vary greatly in complexity, including dimmable ballasts and electronic ballasts. They may be as simple as a resistor, inductor, or capacitor (or a combination of these) wired in series with the lamp or as complex as the electronic ballasts used in compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), high-intensity discharge lamps (HID lamps) and dimmable ballasts. The ballast factor is a measure of the efficiency of a ballast. It is the ratio of the lumen output of a fluorescent lamp type with a ballast to that of the same lamp without a ballast.
Drivers
Using an LED Driver is vital in preventing damage to the LED as the forward voltage (Vf) of a high-power LED changes with temperature.
Forward Voltage is better explained as the amount of volts the light-emitting diode requires to conduct electricity & illuminate or “light up.” As temperature increases, the forward voltage of the LED decreases, emitting less light. This causes the LED to draw more current. The LED will continue to get hotter and draw more current until the LED burns itself out, which is known as a “Thermal Runaway.”
The LED driver is a self-contained power supply whose outputs are directly matched to the electrical characteristics of the LED(s). This helps avoid thermal runaway as the constant current LED driver will compensate for the changes in the forward voltage while delivering a constant current to the LED.
Regardless of your Ballast or Driver requirements, our lighting experts are committed to providing the best product fit, exceptional product quality and at the best pricing. Please call us at: (702) 384-6407
Ballasts & LED Drivers
Metal Halide Ballasts
Pulse-Start Metal Halide Ballasts
Sodium Ballasts
Emergency Ballasts
LED Drivers
Compact Fluorescent Ballasts
LED Power Supplies
Electronic Metal Halide Ballasts
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