Manufacturing energy efficient electronic products to be “eco-friendly” or “environmentally friendly” is becoming increasingly popular, even necessary, as a means to assist protection of the environment, promote products, and meet ever more stringent regulatory requirements in different countries. However, saving energy need not only encompass improving the energy efficiency of a product when it is being used, but may also encompass the energy consumed in the production and testing of the product.
For many electronic products, after assembly, the product is subjected to a burn-in process intended to weed out infant mortalities thereby improving the reliability of products delivered to consumers. The use of energy-recycling in the burn-in process is known in the power supply manufacturing industry, but the development of energy-recyclable burn-in systems for electronic ballasts has not, to date, been particularly successful because of the technical challenges peculiar to the electronic ballast burn-in process. The most common existing burn-in method for electronic ballasts is carried out by connecting a lamp or a resistor at the ballast's output and operating the ballast at steady-state for a predetermined period of time. However, this has associated with it a number of disadvantages. Not only does this burn-in method waste electrical power, it also raises ambient temperatures in the test facility, requiring enhanced ventilation systems to remove excessive heat. Significantly, this well known burn-in method for electronic ballasts expends all energy used in the burn-in process as heat and light and is thus very wasteful.