What is a Lighting Ballast?
A lighting ballast is a piece of equipment required to control the starting and operating voltages of electrical gas discharge lights. Examples of gas discharge light sources include fluorescent and neon lights and high-intensity discharge (HID) lamps. The term lighting ballast can refer to any component of the circuit intended to limit the flow of current through the light, from a single resistor to more complex devices. A lighting ballast is necessary to operate discharge lights because they have negative resistance, meaning they are unable to regulate the amount of current that passes through them. A lighting ballast must be used to control current flow; otherwise the light could fail. Small light sources can use passive components, which require no additional power to operate, as ballasts. An example would be a series resistor that limits the flow of current across its terminals. For high-powered lights, however, a resistor would waste a large amount of electricity, so a more compl
