If you wanna get real fancy with describing the ballast, the right winding with all of the hot connections is an autotransformer that spits out ~250V (cuz H33 ballast; M59 halide ballasts are around 330V) to supply the choke on the left. This choke works in concert with the capacitor to form an LC circuit that drives the lamp with close to a square wave. The capacitor is the main ballasting impedance.
Thanks for the information! I'v heard A few people say that the capacitor was there purely just to increase the efficiency . Were they wrong or am I just not understanding this properly?
@@hobbycentral3516 Capacitors that are purely for power factor correction are used with choke/reactor and high leakage reactance autotransformer/HX ballasts, and are not essential for ballast or lamp operation. This fixture uses a constant power autotransformer/peak lead ballast where the capacitor is actually part of the LC tank circuit that drives the lamp.
