Abstract: The present invention provide a an electronic ballast for instant start gas discharge lamps that is designed with a limited number of components thereby enabling it to be produced relatively inexpensively and to be operated more efficiently and more reliably. The invention provides quasi-voltage fed, half-bridge parallel resonant inverter. This inverter exhibits a voltage output characteristic in which the output power is inversely proportional to the load. The invention instantly starts in any order the multi-parallel configured gas discharge lamps. This invention balances the output current. This permits increasing the resonant frequency of the inverter to values higher than 50 Khz while maintaining a low crest factor and high efficiency.