Fluorescent ballast wiring help

[PowerSet]

Hello everyone, I'm new here, and hate to start off by bugging everyone, but it's the reason I came here!

I have what I would consider limited to decent electrical knowledge, but I have never done anything with fluorescent lights, so I want to make sure I don't cause anything catastrophic.

The ballast itself has a fairly straightforward diagram on it, it is a 2 lamp ballast that is capable of handling several types of bulbs, including F17T8 which is what I will be using it.

Wiring to the bulbs is easy enough, there are two blue leads each going to a bulb, and a single read lead shared by both.

At the other end of the ballast is a which and a black lead, black being hot, and white being neutral(Which really threw me off, I believe I am most used to black being a common/ground and white being hot.)

The case of the ballast itself needs to be grounded as well, which is a slight problem as the old fixture is all plastic, no metal to ground to, and only has a 2 pin plug going to the wall.

I have a heavy duty grounded plug I would like to replace the old wire with, and inside of the new wire are three colored wires, green black and white, my assumption is that green is the ground, white is hot, and black is negative, but I would love to go by more than just an assumption when electricity is involved!

If I am correct, I believe I should be running white from the ballast to black in the wire, black in the ballast to white in the wire, and grounding the metal case of the ballast to the green wire. To me that sounds horrible and backwards to say, which is exactly why I am here to help!

Any help is appreciated, and if necessary I can take some pictures and post them, but I don't believe they are necessary for this.

Thanks,
PowerSet

 

[Minder]

You show US origin so the normal standard in N.A. is white neutral and black live conductor.
Where did you experience the opposite?
For a ballast it does not really matter, but the fitting should be earth grounded.
M.

 

[PowerSet]

Any electrical wiring I have done has been inside of a car, or inside of a computer, where black is always negative, and red/yellow/white tend to be hot. I have not done anything like this before unfortunately, so that's why I figured it would be worth getting some knowledgable advice.

So in my new grounded plug, white should be neutral, black would be hot, and green would be ground?

In that case I can just go white to white, black to black,and ground the case to green?

Edit- So I would assume when It comes to AC it is generally black as hot and white as neutral, whereas in DC applications Red/white are hot, and black is neutral?

 

[Minder]

The N.A. and Europe standard colour for service wiring is BLK Hot and White Neutral, Green or Green/Yellow earth ground.
M.

 

[PowerSet]

Thank you very much for the fast response and help!