Does anyone make X10 dimming electronic ballasts for fluorescent lamps?
Ideally for a 28W or 38W 2D lamp, but would be interested in one for
any type of fluorescent lamp.
Not in one piece, so far as I can tell. However, there are several dimmable
fluorescent ballasts that can be controlled by a conventional-technology phase
control lamp dimmer such as an X-10 lamp module. Some examples are the Lutron Hi-
Lume and Eco-10, and I think also the Advance Mark 10 "powerline". These are
fairly expensive if you buy one through conventional channels, but lately a host
of less familiar brand dimmable ballasts are showing up. You would need one that
is dimmed in the conventional way and not a 0-10V or DALI model.
These ballasts have three power wires. A neutral, a hot, and a dimmed hot. The hot
is always at full AC line when the lamp is on at any brightness. You might not
even switch it if the few watts of standby power is acceptable. The dimmed hot
would connect to the load side of the light dimmer.
I tried this with one of the Lutron ballasts and a decent quality, manual phase
control dimmer ... it didn't work. The dimmer needed more of a load on it than the
ballast. I tried adding an incandescent bulb load on the dimmer, and that was
sufficient to make it go. I had a ballast for two F32T8 tubes and it worked
beautifully. To fully answer your question I would have had to try another ballast
and/or a different dimmer to see if another combination would work reliably. If it
was allowable to have a small incandescent lamp in parallel with the fluorescent
fixture then I am sure you could make the combination work as it did for me.
George
