AN INVESTIGATION ON THE ENERGY SAVING POTENTIAL OF ELECTROMAGNETIC BALLAST FLUORESCENT LAMPS

Fluorescent lamps have proven to be the most efficient lighting device. However, energy losses have been found in electromagnetic ballast due to high harmonic distortion and low power factor so energy is consumed unnecessarily. In today’s energy demanding environment, energy efficiency of fluorescent lamps can be improved by introducing an energy saving controller in the electromagnetic ballast. The energy saving controller limits the supply voltage to an optimum level which tends to reduce the power losses in electromagnetic ballasts and fluorescent lamps. It is also anticipated that the energy saving controller has desirable characteristics of high power factor with dimmable illuminance level control. In comparison to electronic dimmable ballast, integration an energy saving controller with electromagnetic ballast fluorescent lamps results in less power consumption, dimmable illuminance control and longer life span at a much lower installation cost. Furthermore, there is no replacement cost for integrating the energy saving controller with existing electromagnetic fluorescent lamps system. In this paper, experimental works have been performed to investigate hardware implementation of the system which further supported by simulation on MATLAB Simulink. Experimental results based on the proposed energy saving controller showed that electromagnetic ballast fluorescent lamps can be dimmed without any problems down to 50% illuminance level output. In addition, experimental results show that 37.5% power consumption can be saved by reducing 15% of the supply voltage.

Different types of fluorescent lamps (FL) play an important role in lighting, since they can provide significant energy saving and last longer than incandescent lamps. However, although the voltage waveform of an electrical power source is considered to be purely sinusoidal at the stage of the circuit design, there appear to be ever-increasing system voltage problems of amplitude variation and harmonic distortion, it is therefore important to realize the effects on the performances of FL under problematic utility voltage. In this paper, tests were conducted on a developed harmonic generating system to realize the electrical and illumination characteristics of two popular types of FL. The interested characteristics includes active power, power factor, total current harmonic distortion and system efficiency. The tested results relevant to the effect of voltage variation and harmonic distortion upon FL were proposed and discussed.

Life cycle analysis of greenhouse gas emissions for fluorescent lamps in mainland China

This paper presents a simple non-differential equation simulating the non-linear rms volt-ampere characteristics of 36W and 40W fluorescent lamps. A mathematical approach to the problem of solving circuits containing fluorescent lamps becomes possible.

Energy savings analysis and harmonics reduction for the electronic ballast of T5 fluorescent lamp in a building's lighting system

The fluorescent lamp with resistance ballast circuit has been investigated at the commercial frequency 50 Hz or 60 Hz through the computer simulation. The characteristics of fluorescent lamps can be expressed by the differential model equation of equivalent conductance. The model constants of differential model equations are determined by the multiple regression method and optimized by the simplex method, which the errorrate between the experimental waveform and simulation waveform are estimated. The resistance ballast operation circuit is assumed as a simplest model circuit for operating the fluorescent lamps. There are very good correlations between the measurement values aud the simulation values, and the accurate model equations of fluorescent lamp with resistance ballast circuit are able to predict.

Characteristics of fluorescent lamps under abnormal system voltage conditions

Major US electric utility climate pledges have the potential to collectively reduce power sector emissions by one-third

In analysing the operating model equation characteristics of fluorescent lamps it is necessary to use the model equations of equivalent conductance of the lamps on high frequency. The model equations are estimated by the error-rate between the experimental waveform and the simulation waveform on high frequency operation. The method of analysis is found to be useful in predicting the model constants and the characteristics of fluorescent lamps on high frequency operation.

This paper presents a PSpice circuit model for the simulation of both static and dynamic characteristics of fluorescent lamps. The proposed model was developed from the combination and modifications of classical Cassie and Mayr equations. It is helpful for a preliminary design of high frequency electronic ballasts. Experimental results on fluorescent lamps at different conditions are presented and they appear to be in good agreement with simulation results.

The characteristics of fluorescent lamps are affected by the ambient temperature, especially so in view of performance at the low temperatnre. We shall briefly report on it as follow.The effect of the ambient temperature on fluorescent lamps is caused by the vapour pressure of mercury. As the ambient temperature goes down, the vapour pressure of mercury drops, while lamp current curve has a part of valley. When the temperature further goes down, lamp current rises again, and comes to the saturation. In other words, in proportion to fall of ambient temperature, vapour of mercury decreases and the lamp current goes down. At a part of valley vapour of mercury extremely decreases and the main discharge moves from the discharge in mercury to that in argon. Almost of mercury vapour disappears and the main discharge moves completly to that in argon. This is the state of saturation.So temperature performance of fluorescent lamps means the change of discharge in two gas particles throngh 3 processes as shown Fig. 7 of the text. This fact can be electrically and optically proved and is concluded as follows.I-the discharge in mercury only.II-the discharge in both mercury and argon under the condition that the discharge in mercury is moving to that in argon.III-the discharge in argon only.

In 2009, the T5 fluorescent tube lamp with electronic ballast was launched by the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) in order to reduce energy consumption in building. The ballast is one of major components of fluorescent lamp. The installation of T5 fluorescent lamp in building has the effect of harmonics. This paper investigated the impact of harmonics from various electronic ballasts existing commercially, and compared with conventional ballast. The obtained results show that the T5 fluorescent tube lamp functioning with electronic ballast is a promising candidate to replace the T8 fluorescent tube lamp with electromagnetic and low watt loss ballast in building.

A specific source of harmonic currents in power grid are fluorescent lamps with electromagnetic ballast. A new model of fluorescent lamps with electromagnetic ballast is presented in this paper. Also, applicability to simulations of fluorescent lamp performance for steady state source voltages and for its RMS time variations with nominal frequency is also demonstrated. The presented model is based on an extended curve fitting procedure against to the existing standard fluorescent lamp models. For the approximation of the lamp's i-u characteristic, a pair of exponential functions representing the fluorescent lamp branches is chosen. The obtained simulation results were verified by comparison against the measurements and an excellent agreement was found. It is also demonstrated that the suggested fluorescent lamp model delivers accurate results for different steady state source voltages including its variations. The presented and suggested lamp model can be efficiently used in harmonic studies and its implementation in the existing EMTP/ATP or MATLAB/SPS simulation tools is straightforward.

This paper presents the design and construction of voltage acceptability curves for fluorescent lighting systems. It is derived from mathematical representation of actual light output variations of fluorescent lamps (FLs) during voltage sags and a predefined malfunction criterion called the light standard. Light standard may be thought of a standard based on a minimum acceptable light output, below which the operation of the lighting system is unacceptable. The effect of voltage sag on the light intensity is obtained by extensive tests conducted for three 18 Watt FLs with different ballast types. The experiments are conducted on the basis of recent testing standards and utilization of a modern industrial power corrupter. The experimental results of tested FLs show that the lamp with electromagnetic ballast is more sensitive to voltage sags than that of the lamps equipped with electronic ballasts. Hence, the design of voltage acceptability curves for FL with electromagnetic ballast is shown to have more restrictive criterion in accepting the supply voltage disturbances such as voltage sag.

As modem society has been reshaped rapidly into the multimedia information society, large size of display devices is required. Thin-film-transistor liquidcrystal-displays (TFT-LCDs) are one of the most popular display devices from small to large size. TFT-LCDs need backlight source, because they are not a self luminance device. Backlight for LCDs is becoming more important with growth of the LCD size. Up to now, multiple fluorescent lamps such as cold cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL), external electrode fluorescent lamp (EEFL) and flat fluorescent lamp (FFL) are generally used as LCD backlight source. Since, the conventional backlight of LCDs illuminates at the full luminance regardless of the images to be displayed, it wasted power and contrast ratio is row due to the light leakage in dark state. Recently, as the luminance efficiency of light emitting diode (LED) has been improved and the cost of LED is going down, the LED is the substitutive solution for the backlight source. Moreover, since LED has many advantages such as long lifetime, wide color gamut, fast response, and so on, LEDs are expected to replace the conventional fluorescent lamps for backlight source of LCD in near future. Although, LED backlight driving systems have been developed and introduced to the market, further reduction of power consumption and cost reduction are still demanded to be widely used as backlight source. In segmented dimming and local dimming methods which have usually adapted to CCFL and LED backlight source, the whole backlight is divided into several segmented and block, backlight scaling is adapted to each segmented and block, respectively. The more division of backlight, the more power saving can be achieved. Therefore, local dimming method can save power consumption more effectively than segmented dimming one. Especially, segmented dimming method has limitation of power saving when the image is bright vertically. Therefore, local dimming is the best way to have local dimming effects. However, local dimming method results in huge increase in the number of drivers needed for large number of division. To compromise between segmented dimming and local dimming methods, a new LED backlight system for LCD TVs which involves the time division X-Y segmented driving method that utilizes row and column switches to control the individual division screen is proposed. Even though the refresh time of an LCD panel is as fast as a CRT display, there are still some problems to be solved before this LCD panel can be implemented to be a time-multiplexed