What exactly is ballast loss in the first place? I know it's where it uses more watts then said, but how is Ballast Loss caused?

I know this is a regulated lag ballast so it has more ballast loss then a CWA ballast. And even more then a reactor.

Basically ballast loss is the amount of electricity that goes into the ballast but doesn't end up going to the lamp, the wasted electricity is converted to heat because no electrical device is 100% efficient, this is a article on the subject (keep in mind a ballast is a type of transformer. I'm not sure there is an easy way to measure ballast loss, though you could just measure the current going into the ballast, convert to watts (Watts= Amps X Voltage-In this case, 120V) and then subtract the rated lamp wattage. An example would be if you measured a 1kW HPS ballast, you might get a reading of 8.75 amps, you would then take 8.75 X 120= 1050, that is the wattage. Then you would subtract 1000 from 1050 and get 50 watts, that is the approximate ballast loss in this example.

I usually define three different kinds of losses:

- The first ones are the watts lost in heat due to the coils' resistance (and also some losses in the ballast core).

- The 2nd ones are the watts consumed in the primary coil and/or other coils not connected to the lamp (like the cap's secondary in a regulated lag ballast). They do contribute to the proper operation of the lamp, but in a system they are generally considered as losses since this power isn't converted into light.

- The 3rd ones are the reactive power being lost due to an lag between current and voltage AC sinewaves, which is generated by any non-resistive load. In high power factor ballasts this effect is greatly reduced but still present.