With over eight kilowatts of lighting capacity in his home, your correspondent decided three years ago to replace each incandescent light bulb, when it died, with a CFL equivalent.

For comparison, a 75-watt incandescent light bulb lasts about 1,000 hours; a comparable CFL lasts 8,000 to 10,000 hours.

Fluorescent lighting ballasts-to be one of the important branches of the applications of PIC- have symbolized the harmonic combination of the Controlled IC and Power IC within a single chip.