How to Rewire an Electric Ballast (2024)

FAQs

What are the 2 blue wires on a ballast? ›

There are many types of ballasts, but the simplest one is usually found in two-tube light fixtures. The ballast has a hot and neutral wire at one end to receive power, and two blue wires a red one at the other end to supply power to the lights.

Method One - Use your smart phone camera. Stand under the light or a place close to the light and point your cell phone camera at the light. If you can see some strong dark strips flickering in your camera, it must be a magnetic ballast based light. Otherwise it should be an electronic ballast based light.

2 and 3 lamp instant start ballasts use blue wires for individual connections, and red wires for common connections. Black wire is for line voltage and white wire for neutral.

It requires having the proper ballast replacement parts, plus knowing how the ballast should be wired. Sometimes, the colour coding on the old ballast does not match the new ballast. We recommend that you always hire a qualified electrician to have a ballast repair or ballast replacement service done.

Ballast failure is often caused by the surrounding environment—mainly heat and moisture. When it's too hot or too cold, a ballast can burn or fail to start your lamps. Heat, along with continuous condensation inside an electronic ballast, can cause corrosion over time.

The ballast is wired to the home's hot, neutral and ground wires on one end, and to the light fixture's lamp holders on the other end. If a ballast fails, it can cause a short, burn out tubes or even cause a fire, so it must be replaced.

If you do have a fixture using international standards, the good news is that the matching is very easy. Brown is your hot wire so you want to connect that to your building's black wire. The blue is negative or return, so that will go to white. Green with yellow stripe is the ground and will go to the building green.

Connect the green wire to your household ground wire (copper/bare wire). Connect the black wires together. Connect the blue wires together or the blue wire to the black wire for lights.

Compared to conventional ballast, electronic ballast is more flexible since it allows more than one lamp to be fitted to a single ballast. In addition, the electronic ballast has no copper windings, it has smaller power losses and longer service life (i.e. lower light output depreciation).

Insert one probe into the wire connector while holding the white wires together. Touch the other probe to the ends of yellow, red, and blue wires coming from the ballast. Some might exclude the yellow. If the ballast doesn't cause the needle to move, you know it needs to be replaced.

Can I check a ballast with a multimeter? ›

Turn off the switch to your fluorescent bulb, expose the ballast in its housing, and set your multimeter to the highest resistance setting. Place the black probe on the white ground wire and the red probe on each of the other wires. A good ballast is expected to read “OL” or max resistance.

Generally, the hot wire on the ballast is black, and the neutral is white. The other colors are the wires that connect the ballast to the fluorescent tube holders and to each other.

The common red wire connects from the ballast to both of the lampholders on the other side of each lamp. An additional red wire connects the two common side lampholders together.

Blue = Neutral

It is located at the end of the circuit for connection after the electricity has flowed around the live and earth wires.

When bypassing the ballast, you may need to change your sockets from the most common shunted sockets to non-shunted sockets. Non-shunted sockets are required if you're using single-ended tubes. This will require a small amount of additional material cost and more labor to replace them all.

The good news is that a typical ballast will generally last about 20 years, so you won't have to worry about replacing them very often. However, cold environments and bad bulbs can factor into the mix, causing the lifespan of the ballast to decrease significantly.

For energy savings, reliability, and longevity – replace ballasts – not bulbs. In addition to energy efficiency issues, older ballasts simply do not offer the reflection geometry newer options do.

Colder lamps require a higher voltage, which is why some fluorescent lamps turn on slowly before they achieve full brightness—the lamp is warming up the gas. A ballast is used to help regulate the current created by this process. Without it, the current would rapidly increase and cause the lamp to overheat.

A replacement ballast costs about $10-25 depending on capacity and brand. The bite is that an electrician trip charge (which includes 30 or 60 minutes work) is going to be $75-150 probably - for about 5 minutes work on each light fixture.

The reading should be between 300 and 1000 volts depending on the ballast model.

What are the yellow wires for on electronic ballast? ›

The two yellow wires complete the circuit through the fluorescent tube back into the ballast. The red and blue wires energize the pins the fluorescent tube is attached to, the yellow wires connect to the pins on the opposite ends of the fluorescent light tubes completing the circuit.

Ballasts must be connected to electrical ground to avoid electrical shock or damage to the equipment and facility.

The protective ground is green or green with yellow stripe. The neutral is white, the hot (live or active) single phase wires are black , and red in the case of a second active.

Answered by Dave, Electrical Safety Expert

The Neutral Black becomes Blue. The Earth wires continue to be Green and yellow.

The black wire is the "hot" wire, it carries the electricity from the breaker panel into the switch or light source.

Blue = Neutral

The neutral wire colour is blue. The neutral wire transfers electricity away from the appliance to avoid overloading.

Red wires are hot wires common in a 240-volt outlet or when a wall switch controls the outlet. Blue and yellow wires are hot wires for ceiling fans and three- or four-way switches. White or gray electrical wires are neutral wires.

The positive wire, also commonly called the hot wire, will typically be black in color. It is the source of the electricity.

Yes, some fluorescent tubes are able to function without the use of a starter. When your tube works with an electronic ballast it does not have a starter.

A disadvantage is that power fluctuations may cause a failure but this can be offset by adding a buffer capacitor. Operation of the ballasts generate heat. Too much heat can damage the components and disrupt current flow to the lamp.

Does electronic ballast need capacitor? ›

Electronic ballast takes supply at 50 – 60 Hz. It first converts AC voltage into DC voltage. After that, filtration of this DC voltage is done by using a capacitor configuration.

T12 vs T8 Fluorescent Tubes

The main difference between T8 and T12 tubes is the tube's diameter. T12 tubes are 1.5" in diameter while T8s are just one inch. All other things—socket sizes, lengths, distance between pins—are the same.

Fortunately, compatibility isn't really an issue, as most electronic ballasts have been designed to replace existing magnetic ballasts. A preferable electronic ballast is the T8 model. This option has several advantages over the T10 and T12, including improved lighting efficiency.

The ballast gives the lamp the amount of voltage it needs to create the current – or arc – between its electrodes, and then automatically lowers and monitors the voltage to make sure there is the perfect amount to keep the light going.

Yes, in North America on a fluorescent ballast, white is neutral and black is hot -- switched hot, that is. In North American wiring, white and gray are neutral, green and yellow/green are safety ground, and everything else is hot. So red is hot.

Ballasts usually run hot, about 140 degrees F, but if one is so hot that you can't keep your hands on it, it is likely the culprit.

The black wire is the "hot" wire, it carries the electricity from the breaker panel into the switch or light source. The white wire is the "neutral" wire, it takes any unused electricity and current and sends it back to the breaker panel.

The ballast has a hot and neutral wire at one end to receive power, and two blue wires a red one at the other end to supply power to the lights.

Red wires- Hot

Red wires are mostly used to connect the home's power system, and hardwired smoke detectors such that if one alarm goes off, all of them go off. Red wires are used in the installation of ceiling fans, where the light switches may be. Electricians can link a red and black wire or two red wires.

How is a ballast wired? ›

Individual wires of one ballast connect to the one side of the fixture, individual wires from the other ballast connect to the other side of the fixture. The common wires of each ballast are connected to the other side of the fixture from each of the individual wires.

The Blue wire represents Neutral. The Green & Yellow wire represents Earth.

Safety risk The most significant negative to a ballast-bypass linear LED is the risk of electric shock since the sockets carry line voltage. It's a common practice to place a finger on the lamp pins while you are trying to install it, and this becomes a risky endeavor when using single-ended ballast-bypass lamps .

Check the Ballast with a Multimeter

Insert one probe into the wire connector while holding the white wires together. Touch the other probe to the ends of yellow, red, and blue wires coming from the ballast. Some might exclude the yellow. If the ballast doesn't cause the needle to move, you know it needs to be replaced.

The plug and play LED lights looks and are used like any ordinary fluorescent tube. Replacing a fluorescent tube with plug and play LED Tube lights is easy as they can be used without a ballast. It does not need any additional modification and is simple to install, like any incandescent or LED tube lights.

No incandescent bulbs require a ballast. No halogen bulbs require a ballast. All fluorescent bulbs require a ballast. All compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs require a ballast, which is often integrated.

While there is likely a small amount of additional energy savings using a direct-wire, or ballast-bypass, LED tube, there still remains a safety risk with line voltage going straight to the sockets.