Ballasts, Drivers & Circuit Design

Lamps rarely connect straight to mains power. Between the supply and the light sits control gear, a ballast for fluorescent, a driver for LED, and its efficiency and quality matter more than people realise. On an LED fitting the driver is usually the first thing to fail and a large part of what separates a good product from a bad one, yet it is invisible on the shelf. This lesson covers why control gear exists, the fluorescent ballast choice, and how LED driver quality decides an installation's real performance.