Investigation into power flow control of ballasted lighting equipment

Abstract

Artificial lighting accounts for a major portion of worldwide electricity consumption. Many countries have recently implemented policies and measures to promote the use of energy saving lamps. Although many different factors should be considered to evaluate a type of lamp, power consumption is always the primary concern. Especially, for lamps powered by ballast such as gas discharge lamps, power regulation is even more critical due to the special characteristics of the lamp. This thesis is focused on providing an investigation into power flow control of lighting equipment with ballast, to provide engineers with better understanding and more flexible control of those lighting equipments. The whole chain of energy-related activities in electrical lighting starts from energy consumption in production stage. Existing burn-in process for electronic ballasts in production is conducted by connecting lamps or resistors to their output, wasting energy into useless heat and light. To reduce energy consumption in this process and provide a more flexible burn-in condition, the development of an energy-recyclable burn-in system for electronic ballast manufacture is investigated. In utilization stage, dimming operation of lamps, which relates to power flow control, is increasingly becoming significant for esthetic and energy saving purpose. Although various dimming schemes have been proposed by previous research, technology on regulating power flow of an existing non-dimmable lighting system is still less impressive. A new dimming module which can be used to turn an existing lighting fixture into a dimmable one with minimum cost is given. The proposed technology principally processes only reactive power from electronic ballast with negligible energy consumption. Recent advances in microelectronics technology have led light-emitting-diode (LED) technology to different lighting applications. The most direct way to use LED lamps is to replace existing lighting fixtures, which involves considerable capital and labor costs, as well as environmental issues in disposing of the removed components. It would thus be advantageous to have LED retrofit lamps that can directly replace the gas discharge lamps. Therefore, two types of LED retrofit lamp driver was developed and introduced in this thesis. This technology provides an eco-friendly and immediate solution to turn a lighting system with fluorescent lamps into the one with LED lamps.

Date of Award	16 Jul 2012
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Shu Hung Henry CHUNG (Supervisor)