Reduced life-time of lamps: Temperature rise and bad power quality

To save energy, many new buildings have modern energy saving lighting installed. In large department or grocery stores the use of fluorescent lamps powered by high frequency electronic ballast is common. There are however consistent reports of large numbers of failures of the electronic ballast of these lamps. The failures of the electronic ballast are due to high temperature or bad power quality. But neither of these reasons has been confirmed as the cause. This paper discusses in general the lifetime of electronic ballast. The paper also presents detailed analysis of results from measurement performed in a grocery store where high instances of failure have been observed. Both temperature and power quality in the harmonic range and 2 to 150 kHz have been included in the measurements.