A reliable and low cost control circuit of electronic ballast for Metal Halide HID lamps

Energy saving is becoming a necessary task for researchers worldwide. Artificial lighting is one of the areas where major energy share is utilized. Metal Halide High intensity discharge (MH-HID) lamp is one of lamp used in artificial lighting with high luminous efficacy. In this paper, a reliable electronic ballast for metal halide lamps along with ignition and dimming strategies is proposed. A transformer-based ignition mechanism is suggested to start the lamp from its cold phase. A simple switching control circuit is developed to drive the lamp with low-frequency square wave voltage to prevent the lamp from acoustic resonance. A buck converter is incorporated to provide dimming options. A 78 W MH-HID rating lamp is used for this study. Satisfactory results are obtained. PSIM simulation software is used.