Development of a metal-halide lamp's electronic ballast

Abstract

Jigging and angling fishery is prevalent in the East Sea of Korea and this fishery needs many lamps to attract the fish. And the fishing boat uses 24-47 ballasts by the vessel′s tonnage to turn on the fishing lamp. A 3.5kW magnetic-type ballast being currently used at many fishing boats can drive two 1.5kW metal-halide lamps. Meanwhile, this ballast has large weight (25kg) and volume. Therefore it is one of reason for the over-consumption of energy and the fire, resulted from overheat and electrical short, occurs occasionally because the ballast is installed at narrow and hot engine room. In addition, most of magnetic ballast has several problems such as periodic condenser replacement, low energy efficiency and making lamp short life, etc. So it is necessary to improve or develop newly the electronic ballast, which has to be smaller, lighter and more efficient. An electronic ballast was designed for the fishing boat by considering duration and electromagnetic interference in the study. Its weight and volume are respectably 40% and 66% compared to current ballast on the basis of PCB. The metal-halide lamp′s spectrum of the designed ballast was nearly same to that of the current ballast in the test of lighting. In particular, the light stability was improved and there isn' t any radio interference. As mentioned above, it is expected that the developed electronic ballast can replace current magnetic ballast because of many advantages related to energy-saving.