Influence of Auxiliary Heating on the Degradation of Fluorescent Lamp Electrodes Under Dimming Operation

Saving energy using dimmable electronic ballasts for fluorescent lamps is becoming a popular solution. Under dimming operation, lamp lifetime can be drastically reduced, if electrode auxiliary heating is not correctly set. In this paper, electrode degradation of a dimmed fluorescent lamp is investigated. Electrode degradation is evaluated by a simple electrical measurement, giving indirectly a measure of barium losses from the electrode surface. This paper shows how the experimental setup has been implemented. Then it shows experimental results obtained on a test run, and finally discusses setup limits. It is shown that strong electrode degradation caused by excessive heating conditions is identifiable within 500 h of operation using this technique.