A novel dimmable electronic ballast for compact fluorescent lamps using phase-cut incandescent lamp dimmers with wide dimming range and low dimming level lamp ignition capability

A new dimmable electronic ballast that is compatible with standard incandescent lamp dimmer with wide dimming range is proposed in this paper for compact fluorescent lamps (CFL). The proposed electronic ballast is able to improve the poor dimming performance in the conventional CFL and at the same time, the dimmed light output can be maintained at its particular level even when the dimmer is switched off and on again. The proposed circuit consists of a compact, high power factor single switch resonant inverter as the power stage and a novel controller that controls the duty ratio of the switch to provide dimming function and the ability for the lamp to ignite at very low dimming level without any lamp flickering. Experimental results are given on a 13 W CFL to verify with the proposed circuit.