| Abstract |
In the traditional emergency lighting systems the internal damages must be detected and repaired by specialist workers. Since this occurs normally after a line voltage failure, the installations have a low security level. In this paper a new emergency ballast for fluorescent lamps with high operation reliability is presented. The system has the capability of testing itself, checking its functional state and displaying its internal damages. The fundamental block is the control circuit based on a microcontroller that performs the supervision and control function, achieving an increase in the installation security. High frequency electronics techniques are used to implement the battery charger and the lamp driver, with high power factor in the first and high luminous efficacy in the second. In this way, sizes and weights have been minimized for all the system. Following this way of conceiving lighting systems we are at this moment studying the possibility of extending this concept to a non-emergency systems. The results will be presented in a new work. |
