Fluorescent Lamps and Starters - Elusive Answers

Welcome to the forum

The lamp current and hence power is determined mainly by the reactance (if wirewound) or output (if electronic) of the ballast. The tube is designed for rated life and output at a given current, and different wattage tubes may contain different gas-fill and electrodes to achieve this. A mismatched tube and ballast could reduce life or efficiency, fail to start at low temperature, etc.

A glow-starter is also a gasfilled tube that has to operate at one voltage but not at another, as required by the operating voltages of the tube. Therefore the different starters have different striking voltages and/or bimetal electrode designs. Assuming a matched tube and ballast, a starter rated too low will continue to attempt to start a lit tube, because it's own striking voltage is too low relative to the running voltage of the tube. A starter rated too high will usually operate OK because the same OCV are available to strike it, but it might not start the tube as reliably under adverse conditions. A mismatched ballast and tube will cause a non-standard running voltage across the tube so the starter behaviour is less predictable. However, for any given tube the higher the ballast rating the higher the voltage, hence the more likelihood that a low-rated starter will continue attempting to start it when lit.

Thanks for your reply

I have a better understanding now.

Also to add - you mentioned series starters which are usually fitted to ballasts that run more than one lamp and these are different to standard starters and will not work in a standard fitting, they are the ones that usually express values of 4-22w.

But there are also 2 types of 4-22W starters. One type seems to be for series on 230V but also for single on 115V. The other type seems to be just for single lamps only as shown below.

The black inked one is a rarity as its not cost effective to produce anymore as the 4-65w covers this range and then some, also laminated ballast type controls are no longer allowed so although its good to know about them as they will still be sold for a good decade, they are been made just to feed the maintenance of older fittings.

Yes your correct the series shown can do a 110v single or 230v a dual lamp ballast but I doubt you'll come across there 110v use anymore.

Lucien Nunes

Your explanation has just sunk in. After going through something from Osram about starters I had downloaded ages ago explaining exactly how a starter works with the voltage across the lamp etc and then re-read all the forum answers that I got last week the picture has become clear.

Thanks