Practical advice on commercial lighting from LED retrofits to lighting design.

This article has been updated with new information and new products. It was originally published in 2017.

If you still have T12s in your building and they run on magnetic ballasts, you may soon face a problem: what do you do when your ballasts die? 

Well, like T12s themselves, magnetic ballasts are becoming harder and harder to find these days. They're really no longer in production in the U.S., so most people today are running T12 fluorescents on electronic ballasts. What is a ballast? Read more.

Before we get into troubleshooting options, let's briefly determine how to tell if a ballast is bad.

Unlike fluorescents, some linear LEDs do not need a ballast to power up and produce light. So, a lot of our customers have been asking us about the safety of just bypassing the ballast and direct-wiring their LED tubes.

Several years ago, we saw a lot of problems with this. People were using the wrong sockets. Fires were starting because of mistakes during install. Fluorescent tubes were accidentally post-installed instead of LED tubes, and they were failing immediately when they came into contact with the line voltage running to the sockets. 

Back then, we were adamant with our warnings against ballast-bypass linear LED solutions. There were just too many safety hazards for us to recommend this, and the technology wasn't quite there. 

Although LED lighting is the most popular and one of the most efficient lighting options right now, our team still faces a lot of questions on fluorescent lighting. Aletheia Cyr, our training and development specialist, helps walk through some of the most common questions we receive on fluorescent lighting. 

If you outfit your buildings with fluorescent, HID, or plug-and-play linear LED lighting, you depend on a device called a ballast. 

When the right ballasts are used, the end result can mean a cost-effective lighting solution that is energy efficient and gives you advanced controls over the amount of light produced in your space. Let’s dig a little deeper.

Have you ever heard a light bulb buzz? 

If you answered yes, you’re actually incorrect. The buzzing you hear is not coming from the bulb itself. It’s actually coming from the ballast.

Nerdy lighting technicalities, I know. Ballasts, light bulbs –– it's all the same, isn't it?

Well, not exactly. If you need to cover some basics on what a ballast is, try reading this article, “What is a ballast?” 

We’ve written separately on the blog about energy savings calculations and ballast factors with ballast-dependent lighting, but how do these two topics come together? This can be a really tricky topic in lighting if you’re new to ballast factors. 

If you're new to commercial lighting, the concept of a ballast can be an odd one. When you're used to just screwing light bulbs into sockets and flipping switches, the transition to ballast-dependent lighting technology can be frustrating.