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[RYAN LOUDMUSIC JENKINS]

It's been discussed over the years here but every so often people bring up concerns that they may not have enough electricity available for thier little sound system.  Convinced they need four or five 20 amp circuits they stress for weeks and discussions go on about it.

10 years ago things were different, gear wasn't nearly as efficient as it is these days.

I hadn't measured my current draw in quite a while so I decided to this past weekend just to see where we are with newer gear.

Setup up was a simple system with six powered LA boxes per side hanging and three 2x18" subs per side on the ground powered by three camco vortex 6 amplifiers.  Five monitor mixes (3 @ 4 ohms and 2 @ 8 ohms)  typical festival LED lighting rig and Backline.

Power was single phase 120/240 with 200 amp company switch. 

During our loudest peaks with the heaviest bass notes we pulled 23 amps on the leg with Backline and 15 amps on the leg with the lights.  The PA was balanced evenly as possible between the two legs.

So the moral to the story is to measure your current when you get a chance, you'll probably be totally surprised how little current you actually draw.

[Tim McCulloch]

It's been discussed over the years here but every so often people bring up concerns that they may not have enough electricity available for thier little sound system.  Convinced they need four or five 20 amp circuits they stress for weeks and discussions go on about it.

10 years ago things were different, gear wasn't nearly as efficient as it is these days.

I hadn't measured my current draw in quite a while so I decided to this past weekend just to see where we are with newer gear.

Setup up was a simple system with six powered LA boxes per side hanging and three 2x18" subs per side on the ground powered by three camco vortex 6 amplifiers.  Five monitor mixes (3 @ 4 ohms and 2 @ 8 ohms)  typical festival LED lighting rig and Backline.

Power was single phase 120/240 with 200 amp company switch. 

During our loudest peaks with the heaviest bass notes we pulled 23 amps on the leg with Backline and 15 amps on the leg with the lights.  The PA was balanced evenly as possible between the two legs.

So the moral to the story is to measure your current when you get a chance, you'll probably be totally surprised how little current you actually draw.

Peak current draw is significantly higher than you can read the moving target display on either an analog or digital meter.  Don't fool yourself.

That said, the average draw is lower than we'd otherwise expect.   Don't rely on average measurements when specifying a generator, for example.

[Patrick Campbell]

Yup Ryan  - things are different now for sure

I can run FOUR EV PX2181  off TWO Powersoft K3's and FOUR EV QRX153/75 off tow Powersoft K2's along with LED lighting and movers and we can do this now on only THREE 20 amps circuits

Much different today than back in the day with the big heavy amps

Thank God !

Have a great summer season everyone !

Patrick

[Robert Piascik]

It's been discussed over the years here but every so often people bring up concerns that they may not have enough electricity available for thier little sound system.  Convinced they need four or five 20 amp circuits they stress for weeks and discussions go on about it.

10 years ago things were different, gear wasn't nearly as efficient as it is these days.

I hadn't measured my current draw in quite a while so I decided to this past weekend just to see where we are with newer gear.

Setup up was a simple system with six powered LA boxes per side hanging and three 2x18" subs per side on the ground powered by three camco vortex 6 amplifiers.  Five monitor mixes (3 @ 4 ohms and 2 @ 8 ohms)  typical festival LED lighting rig and Backline.

Power was single phase 120/240 with 200 amp company switch. 

During our loudest peaks with the heaviest bass notes we pulled 23 amps on the leg with Backline and 15 amps on the leg with the lights.  The PA was balanced evenly as possible between the two legs.

So the moral to the story is to measure your current when you get a chance, you'll probably be totally surprised how little current you actually draw.

+1

This has been my experience as well. I have run a fairly large (for me) Danley system (8x TH118, 4x SM80) with backline and lighting off my Honda eu6500 with no issues hitting 100db at 100'

[Mike Santarelli]

+1

This has been my experience as well. I have run a fairly large (for me) Danley system (8x TH118, 4x SM80) with backline and lighting off my Honda eu6500 with no issues hitting 100db at 100'

What power amps are you running?  I’ve been able to do a lot with my 6500 also.

[Robert Piascik]

What power amps are you running?  I’ve been able to do a lot with my 6500 also.

Crown IT8K and Powersoft M50Q

[John Daniluk (JD)]

you might be surprised if you use an old fashioned amp pen recorder,  also when you pull around 20a on a breaker it may trip due to heat,  hard to reset.   

You will start having breaker problems when you push your system,  close to amp clip.   I usually run 2 QSC 1310 per 20a breaker.  If using the amps for subs and pushing them the 2 QSC amps will trip a 20a breaker.    With the new style amps  you will see a voltage drop before tripping breaker.   Also when the voltage drops the amp draw goes up. 

jd

[frank kayser]

you might be surprised if you use an old fashioned amp pen recorder,  also when you pull around 20a on a breaker it may trip due to heat,  hard to reset.   

You will start having breaker problems when you push your system,  close to amp clip.   I usually run 2 QSC 1310 per 20a breaker.  If using the amps for subs and pushing them the 2 QSC amps will trip a 20a breaker.    With the new style amps  you will see a voltage drop before tripping breaker.   Also when the voltage drops the amp draw goes up. 

jd

Curiosity: An old fashioned pen recorder are quite sensitive as I've heard.  Would they actually be able to respond to the peaks that audio produce? 
What other type of peak hold meter might work?
You mentioned that running close to the breaker's capacity could cause it to trip due to overheating - probably on an old or abused breaker: that I've seen.  Wouldn't some type of averaging meter help define that level of draw?
Wouldn't two types of meters give a better idea of what the profile of current draw is?
frank

[Steve Litcher]

A few summers ago we were forced to run an outdoor stage on two (2) 110-volt, 20-amp circuits. It was a nail-biter, but we never tripped a circuit. System at that time consisted of:

4x PLX3602 running 2x EAW FR153z and 6x EAW SB180R
1x QSC PLD4.5 running 4x CM12V monitors
Backline and FOH (X32, DBX 360)

I have no idea how we didn't manage to trip anything; we were pushing the system fairly hard the entire weekend.


Most recently, while in the shop, we had 28x Blizzard HotBox RGBA lights, 4x Blizzard SnowBlinds and 8x Blizzard G-Streak lights running on a single 15-amp circuit, no problems at all.

I usually over-spec power just to be safe, but it's good to know that if in a pinch, you can usually get by on less than you'd think you might need.*

*The one exception: fog geysers... we have to run them on their own circuits. We were at a wedding event over the winter, and putting anything else on the circuit with a geyser resulted in a tripped breaker. Makes sense, though, as our geysers have a 1500W heater plus LEDs and whatnot.

[John Schalk]

*The one exception: fog geysers... we have to run them on their own circuits. We were at a wedding event over the winter, and putting anything else on the circuit with a geyser resulted in a tripped breaker. Makes sense, though, as our geysers have a 1500W heater plus LEDs and whatnot.

Yep, at our first show with two of these darn things, we popped a breaker right away.  Our lighting guy brought them, so I did not look at their current draw until after the noise stopped coming out of the PA.  Sigh.  Now we are back to needing four 20's when we setup all the lights, foggers, and geysers.  As Patrick mentioned, the PA and backline runs just fine on two, but we always try to get the buttkicker amp, a Crest 7001, on a third circuit.

[ProSoundWeb Community]