1 June 2007 Cluj-Napoca, Romania - Lighting Engineering Center ...

International Conference ILUMINAT 2007
Figure 10 One ballast suffices for two smaller
lamps, reducing the levels of both reactive
power and active losses below the level which
otherwise one lamp alone would cause
Figure 11 Two ballasts and one capacitor are
enough to operate four 18 W lamps in this
luminaire very economically, both from an
energy efficiency and from an initial investment
cost viewpoint
• However, to identify a payback time for the use of electronic ballasts is difficult, as the pricing often
includes other factors in addition to the price difference between magnetic and electronic ballasts.
Some luminaires are only available with electronics. It may even require a surcharge to get
magnetics as an extra. In such cases it seems to be time to look for a different supplier if you prefer
magnetic ones for reliability or EMC reasons. However, when considering to pay a price premium
for electronic ballasts in order to improve energy efficiency, it remains to also consider that,
depending on the assumptions you make, it takes between 1000 and 10,000 hours of operation to
save 1 Euro of electricity costs.
1. Vidmar, M.: Die Transformatoren. Berlin 1921. Quoted in: Elektropraktiker 10/2004, Berlin, S. 793
2. www.celma.org
3. www.dial.de
4. http://lighting.copperwire.org
FASSBINDER Stefan
Deutsches Kupferinstitut
Am Bonneshof 5, D-40474 Düsseldorf
Tel. +49 211 4796323, Fax +49 211 4796310
SFassbinder@kupferinstitut.de
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