Eta follow up question because curious:
I’ve always been told when a street lamp has a loud buzzing/droning that it’s a bad ballast. Were they talking about a part within the transformer?
In: 1
As others mentioned: you are usually hearing the “transformer” operate. A transformer takes one type of electricity and converts it to another type (ELI15: often they convert AC to DC and step down the voltage). The whine or hum comes from the fact that the transformer is physically vibrating while converting the electricity (ELI15: because it is a magnet and the core is getting pulled by the electromagnetic field).
It can be “fixed” by replacing it with a higher quality/newer transformer. It’s not practical to “fix” the existing one.
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