According to a first aspect, a power supply and a method of providing power for igniting a plasma in a reactive gas generator is provided that includes (i) coupling a series resonant circuit that comprises a resonant inductor and a resonant capacitor between a switching power source and a transformer, the transformer having a transformer primary and a plasma secondary; (ii) providing a substantially resonant AC voltage from the resonant capacitor across the transformer primary, thereby inducing a substantially resonant current within the transformer primary to generate the plasma secondary; and (iii) upon generation of the plasma secondary, the resonant inductor limiting current flowing to the switching power supply. According to another aspect, bipolar high voltage ignition electrodes can be used in conjunction with inductive energy coupling to aid in plasma ignition.