Power Gems

>Power Gems' innovative HP575 ballast brings hot restrike capability to discharge lamps. In 1999 the company began to investigate if it would be possible to drive a 575W at high frequency and, furthermore, to be able to hot re-strike the lamp. They had to overcome the problem of acoustic resonance, then build a cold strike prototype to examine the system's performance, before finally designing a new type of ignitor to achieve the hot re-strike, because with a lamp drive frequency in excess of 300kHz, conventional ignitors simply burn out.

The result is a patented 575W ballast with integrated hot re-strike ignitor (a cold strike version is also available) with fewer parts and generating less heat than conventional systems. It does not ordinarily require fan cooling, is light-weight and cheaper to manufacture than its conventional counterparts. Furthermore, tests at Philips in Belgium have shown that lamps operating for 1,000 hours on high frequency sine wave show considerably reduced de-vitrification and appear almost new in comparison to lamps run on low frequency. Clearly this system has the ability to change the way we consider discharge luminaires in the future, and is a worthy PLASA Award winner.

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