An electrical ballast is a device intended to limit the amount of current in an electric circuit. A familiar and widely used example is the inductive ballast used in fluorescent lamps, to limit the current through the tube, which would otherwise rise to destructive levels due to the tube's negative resistance characteristic.
Ballasts vary in design complexity. They can be as simple as a series resistor or reactor, capacitors, or a combination thereof or as complex as electronic ballasts used with fluorescent lamps and HIDs.
Read more about Electrical Ballast: Current Limiting, Resistors, Reactive Ballasts, Electronic Ballasts, ANSI Ballast Factor
Famous quotes containing the word electrical:
“Few speeches which have produced an electrical effect on an audience can bear the colourless photography of a printed record.”
—Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl Rosebery (1847–1929)