Things You Should Know About Digital Ballast

 It may be ironic to know how a global pandemic has drifted our minds to productive horticulture opportunities rather than exposing ourselves to dangers outside our homes.

Indoor garden setups have suddenly become a thing that the market for grow lights rose. The spike in purchasing these items is because the sunlight adaptable to plants is limited to more than just a couple of hours per day, possibly leaving their growth to chance. Now, this is where the best 1000 watt ballast will do wonders as we induce artificial light to sustain life in your at-home nurseries and gardens.

Ballasts regulate the flow of current to your grow lights, thus ensures voltage sufficiency to them. Read along as I share my expertise on these things and help you in picking the best one for your plants.

What is a Digital Ballast?

Because of the specific requirements of High-Intensity Discharge (HID) bulbs (includes HPS and MH bulbs), they need an electronic ballast to supply them with power and manage their capabilities.

The ballast takes your input voltage and current and regulates it into pulses within specific frequencies to enable your lamp or bulb to run efficiently and optimally, regardless of voltage fluctuations outside of the system.

The best digital ballasts should be able to keep your HID bulbs running optimally even if your input voltage suddenly changes.

Usually, ballasts look like a rectangular shaped box covered in aluminum heatsinks with electrical connectors, cables, knobs, and sometimes digital screens.

What makes an electronic ballast a digital one is that they contain a microprocessor. You must have a microprocessor in your ballast — it makes a huge difference. The microprocessor enables the ballast to run MH and HPS lamps, make necessary adjustments based on the type of lamp it is running at a given time, and sometimes even compensate for lamp degradation.

Ballasts vs. Bulbs: Which to Spend Money On

The easy answer? Both.

The technical answer? Still both.

The “I’m trying to save money answer?” The ballast.

It’s this simple: you shouldn’t be running high-quality bulbs with a lower quality ballast, but you also wouldn’t want to run a $10 Bulb with your $250 ballast.​

A good quality HID bulb should run you a long way without breaking down, but it is recommended that you change your bulbs at least once every year because they suffer from degradation due to their nature.

This means that as time goes on their PAR (Photosynthetically Active Radiation) output lowers. Sometimes, the bulbs even have changes in the spectrum of light they put out. So if you think your 5-year-old HPS bulb is running just fine, think again!​

This is why you actually can run standard bulbs on higher-end ballasts. You’ll enjoy the safety and consistency of a good ballast and your pocket will thank you when you save 40 dollars on bulb replacement.​

Note: Replacing your bulbs every 6 months is not at all necessary and depends highly on your application and needs. But if you’re hoping to achieve the biggest yields and efficiency, you should consider replacing your bulbs periodically on top of using the highest quality ballasts.​

An important thing to note is that using a lower quality ballast will lower the light output of even high-quality bulbs by up to 10%. So remember that you should always match your high-quality bulbs with a high-quality ballast.​

What to Look for When Buying Digital Ballasts

Different digital ballast reviews suggest practices when choosing a ballast. If you are looking for it but unsure of the characteristics to look at, consider the following important notes that may lead you to the best one:

Bulb safety — To preserve your bulbs, select the ballast with ignition voltage control and regulate current flow.
Versatility — Your ballast must be able to withstand different conditions and locations. It also has to work with either MH or HPS bulbs, DE and SE ones. And it’s expected to run bulbs of different wattage.
Durability — A quality ballast shows little to zero effect on your lamps’ performance in cases of voltage fluctuations. You have to consider the kind of materials used for its casing, and even its internals.
Dimming — Crops do not grow on the same level of sunlight. So, your ballast has to have different dimming levels for you to switch on whenever necessary.
RFI Protection — Wire shielding is essential for your ballast to protect electronic devices and radios from signals within frequencies coming from it.
Temperature — Ballasts get hot, but not too hot that you can’t touch it. You need to pick the one that causes no overheating, otherwise, your greenhouse will burn out, or your plants will lose excessive amounts of
Noise — Little sounds coming off its cooling fan is bearable, but not the one that becomes annoying.

Conclusion

All gardeners want their plants to grow healthily. I am so sure of that because that has been my ultimate goal every time I sow. In order for us to be successful, we have to have the best 1000 watt ballast to aid us.