The American National Standards Institute approved E1.16 as an American National Standard on August 8. The new standard, ANSI E1.16-2002, Entertainment Technology - Configuration Standard for Metal-Halide Ballast Power Cables, is available for free as an Adobe Acrobat PDF file at http://www.esta.org/tsp/ANSI_E1-16_2002.pdf. The file can be read and printed using either Adobe Acrobat or Acrobat Reader. The latest version of Reader is available free from the Adobe website.
ANSI E1.16 may be an inexpensive standard, but it's designed to eliminate expensive accidents. Manufacturers of ballasts for HMI-type lamps rated 6kW and above often use a common circular, three-pin connector for connecting the detachable power cable to the ballast. Most manufacturers use one particular pin of the three for the protective grounding connection, but until the publication of ANSI E1.16, there was no standard specifying which pin. Without such a standard, a manufacturer could easily decide to use a different pin for ground and the usual grounding pin for an ungrounded power conductor. This has happened, with the result that using one manufacturer's ballast with another's power cord led to an electrically hot ballast chassis. The use of a standard grounding connector assignment across the industry will help prevent this from happening.
For more information, please contact:
Karl G. Ruling
Technical Standards Manager
Entertainment Services and Technology Association
875 Sixth Avenue, Suite 1005
New York, NY 10001
Phone: (212) 244-1505
Fax: (212) 244-1502
standards@esta.org