Degradação da qualidade de reatores eletromagnéticos de lâmpadas de descarga

This paper describes the procedures and results of a study to evaluate the quality and determination of the electromagnetic losses in ballasts used for the illumination of large areas (as the ones in industry buildings) or in public lighting networks. A number of new and old high pressure sodium and mercury vapor lamp ballasts were tested, which are adopted by the energy company ENERGISA S. A., with the aim of verifying whether they satisfy, in fact, the Brazilian standards and determine the energy losses throughout their lifetime (some with more than 10 years of use). The study has shown that less than 1% of tested units presented problems of power losses above the established standards. In addition, 12.7% of the old ballasts have not complied with short-circuit standards. Dielectric strength tests were also performed in a number of samples, and showed no significant problems. However, the power factor observed was significantly below the minimum threshold, which is 0.92 (inductive), for a large amount of tested unities. Something more troubling, which was verified when carrying out the studies, is that the degradation of power factor occurs even for units recently installed on the public lighting networks, in some cases with less than three months of use. This condition was relatively well distributed in terms of the manufacturer, model of the ballast and place of installation.