Profiling Starting Transient of Fluorescent Lamp With High-Frequency Electronic Ballast

This paper proposes a new starting profile with some modifications to the definition of American National Standards Institute to interpret the starting process of fluorescent lamps driven by high-frequency electronic ballasts. The new starting profile redefines the times of preheating, ignition, and steady state. A glow-to-arc transition is considered to account for the stage from glow discharging to a stable lamp arc. By the new definition, the glow current and the glow-to-arc current can be calculated to evaluate the lamp-starting performance. The applicability of the starting profile is confirmed experimentally by the instant-, preheat-, and rapid-starting schemes.