A TRIAC Dimmable Single-Switch Electronic Ballast With Power Factor Correction and Lamp Power Regulation

With the global concerns on the issue of how to conserve the limited energy resources, compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) have been forced in a lot of countries to replace the power-hungry incandescent lamps to reduce the energy cost. However, conventional passive power factor corrected electronic ballasts used in CFLs suffer two major drawbacks: 1) they are unable to achieve close-to-unity power factor and 2) they are unable to provide the same amount of light intensity under fluctuating line voltage. This paper proposed a simple lamp power regulation method for a very high-power factor single-switch electronic ballast, which allows the electronic ballast to maintain almost constant lamp power at its full-power condition for a wide range of the input voltage by controlling the dc-link voltage of the ballast power circuit through duty ratio control. When a TRIAC phase-cut dimmer is used to dim the CFL, the dc-link voltage regulation control loop is deactivated; so that the lamp power decreases accordingly during dimming. The analysis and operating principles of the controller are discussed in this paper. MATLAB, PSIM simulation, and experimental results are provided to highlight the merits of the proposed work.