This paper presents a stable lighting method for HID lamp for ship from initial discharging current limit with discharging voltage control. The output voltage of the proposed control scheme is boosted for ignition, and the charging voltage is decreased by the resistor discharging. The proposed controller fires the initial discharge at the designed discharging voltage to limit the discharge current. After the discharging, constant current controller is used for brightness in steady state. The proposed control scheme can limit the initial discharge current using the starting point control without a complex voltage controller. so it can improve the life-time of HID lamp and get a stable discharge from restricted the initial discharge current. In order to improve the protection of the system, a simple instantaneous error detecting circuit for open state and short state of HID lamp is used. The proposed error detecting of HID lamp can protect the power system of lamp control. The effectiveness of the proposed controller is verified from the experiments of practical 2.5[kW] HID search light for ship.