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I finally got around to working on my light fixture.It is a Nova Extreme T5, four bulbs and with moonlights. I plugged it up to see what it was doing for sure, and it seems to be functioning properly. I will leave it on for a while to make sure it isn't just a temporary thing. Is it possible that it had moisture somewhere that needed to dry out for the light to work?

Hi, Kenna,

That's possible. If the unit lights for a while, then goes off, another possibility is that your ballast may have thermal overload protection built in. This is a circuit that opens if the unit gets too hot, and resets when it cools down. In that case, check to be sure air flow around the unit is unhindered, vents aren't blocked, and (if the unit has built in fans) that they are clean and running full speed. If those are all okay, the ballast may need replacing.

I recall you saying that you could see a bulb strobe-- where you can see waves of light travel across the bulb. Another cause of that that I forgot to mention is proper grounding. I recall a light unit that required grounded metal plates to be behind the bulb itself or it would have trouble starting and would strobe. Sometimes, touching the light unit with a finger would ground it and cause it to fire up.

The light has been on just about all day long with no issues. Lets hope it has fixed itself.

Hey Mike, you didn't happen to put a hex on me or something at the meeting???????????????????? The next day one of my fluorescent lights quit working. Now I gotta run down one of these funky ballast with a built in starter. No starter to be found but does have 6 wires coming out of it. If I can't find one tomorrow I'll post a pic of it. It's a 5 year old ALL-GLASS light.

Second day of correct functioning from the T5 lights.

Woohoo!