Fluorescent Lamps in Series?
. However, there is at least one application where putting two lamps is parallel makes sense: light fixtures in hard-to-reach or safety-critical areas where redundancy is desirable. With only minor modifications at most, a conventional single lamp ballast can be connected to a pair of lamps in such a way that only one will light at any given time. (Which one actually starts could be random without additional circuitry, however.) If either lamp burns out or is removed, the other will take over. The ballast must provide enough power to the filaments for starting but once started, the lamp that is on will operate normally and there should be no degradation in performance or expected lamp life (except to the extent that the unlit lamp’s filaments might be kept hot). The following is just a suggestion – I have not confirmed if or with which model ballasts these schemes will work! For rapid start ballasts, this could be as simple as wiring all connections to the lamps in parallel – if the ba
