scope:

This white paper provides information about self-ballasted lamps and the implications these lamps present from a power quality perspective. It focuses on the use of self-ballasted lamps in residences and on residential power quality. Self-ballasted lamps have dedicated ballasts or drivers that are part of the lamp itself, which allows the lamp to be used in some sockets that originally were meant for incandescent lamps. The ballast or driver intercepts the electrical current before it enters the light source itself, and it cannot be removed from the base. Some CFLs and some LED lamps are examples of self-ballasted lamps.

Utilities are often internally conflicted on the issue of residential power quality. Engineering departments tend to be conservative since they are entrusted with the reliability of the system. Accordingly, they also tend to be risk-averse regarding power quality issues, even when the loads are small and experience indicates that problems have yet to occur with products, such as non-power-factor (PF) corrected self-ballasted lamps (also called normal power factor, but the terms low power factor and non-power-factor corrected will be used interchangeably in this document). This white paper presents information from work started in the late 1990s using CFLs in aggregate and with other loads, including LEDs, to try to better understand why non-power-factor corrected CFL and more recent LED usage posed no problems during the introduction of self-ballasted lamps into the residential marketplace. We hope this paper will help justify why utilities should not hesitate to support and endorse the use of self-ballasted lamps, even those without power factor correction.