Single-stage electronic ballast with high-power factor

Abstract

This article proposes a single-stage electronic ballast circuit with high-power factor. The proposed circuit was derived by sharing the switches of the power factor correction (PFC) and the half-bridge LCC resonant inverter. This integration of switches forms the proposed single-stage electronic ballast, which provides an almost unity power factor and a ripple-free input current by using a coupled inductor without increasing the voltage stress. In addition, it realises zero-voltage-switching (ZVS) by employing the self-oscillation technique. The saturable transformer constituting the self-oscillating drive limits the lamp current and dominates the switching frequency of the ballast. Therefore, the proposed single-stage ballast has the advantage of high-power factor, high efficiency, low cost and high reliability. Steady-state analysis of the PFC and the half-bridge LCC resonant inverter are described. The results of experiments performed using a 30 W fluorescent lamp are also presented to confirm the performance of the proposed ballast.

Keywords:

• electronic ballast
• power-factor-correction (PFC)
• single-stage

Acknowledgement

This research was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology(2012R1A1A2008890).