Flourescent lighting fixture ballast premature failure!

[toro45]

I have a client of mine complaining that the ballast on their flourescent lights fail too often. The only thing I could come up with is that since the building was wired in the 1930's the ground grid may have corroded thereby rendering it ineffective.

My logic is that if the ground grid is not continous, then a fault current will be conducted through the hot and neutral wires and this could damage the ballasts or any other equipment on the circuit. Is this a plausible explanation?

Has anyone else this experience with ballasts failing prematurely.

You responses will be appreciated

 

[Skogsgurra]

Are these ballasts old style chokes or newer electronic ones? Also, what country are you in? What voltage and frequency?

Gunnar Englund

http://www.gke.org

 

[toro45]

By the way this is in the US. The system is a 120v/60Hz and the ballasts are electronic ballasts.

 

[Skogsgurra]

If it is not inferior quality (do they live longer in other installations?) and if it is not high or low voltage (easily checked). Then you may have HF components in your mains voltage. I had a swimming hall once where there was electric heating and thyristor control of the heating power. Not ON/OFF, but phase control. When the phase control was turned up a little more than half, the ballasts popped. The transients from the thyristors drew heavy current transients through the front end rectifiers of the ballasts. We had to install line reactors in series with the heating. After that OK.

Gunnar Englund

http://www.gke.org

 

[dpc]

Electronic ballasts have (or at least have had) a high infant mortality. We've seen entire batches that failed within a few months, especially when the dreaded "or equal" ballast was substituted.

There could be other causes, but I've seen so many problems with cheap ballasts that I would focus on those at first. Also, check the obvious - are the correct lamps being used with the ballasts.

If these are electromagnetic ballasts, then you might need to cast a wider net.