Hello! I'm on a work site and need lots of high wattage work lights. How can I without blowing a fuse?
Question:I'm preparing a work site and need to hook up five or six 1000 watt work lights to properly light the area at night. I have an outdoor outlet onsite, but that's five or six thousand watts of juice, which will surely blow a fuse or tip a breaker. Is there any way I can run the lights off the commercial power without doing that? Is there a capacitor or something I could buy?
Answers:
You have the right idea. If you try and run 6KW off of one outlet then you are tripping a breaker or blowing a fuse.
You will have to get a generator to power the lights, either that or at least 3 more lines out there from the commercial source.
some one already gave you the formula to find the current.
I = W/V eg. ( 50A = 6KW / 120V )
I'm not sure what kind of site you are on but with my company I have found that you can contact a large rental company such as Hertz Equipment and they have a large selection of commercial generators. Most places have highly trained experts that will help you decide which one would work best with your site and will even help with the setup. But you have to keep your budget in mind they can be expensive.
Get your foreman, or logistical coordinator on the horn, & tell 'em if they want the job to happen, & be safe, you need a commercial generator.
If they refuse, do what you can with what you've got & place an "anonymous" call to OSHA
Sounds low, but so is sending people out into the field without the resources needed to bring a job in with no injuries, & on time.
Good luck!!
Are you sure you need to be using at the rate of 6000 watts??
Though the initial costs may be non-trivial, sodium vapor lamps put out a lot of light for their wattage. Their main disadvantage is color rendering is bad; but if you're mainly after having enough light for security and to see, then check on bulbs that put out lots of LUMENS for their wattage,
and see if they would serve your purpose.
Divide the watts by the volts. This will give you the amps. Then divide up your lighting into circuits. If you have 20amp 120volt circuit then you can safely put 16.5amps without blowing the fuse or breaker.
Generator
Sorry you may start a fire , overloading an outlet, or blow a fuse,
also they sell generators you can connect to your car
i seen my cable satilite guy with it.
if your a pro you can connect it to main breaker, but if your not a pro dont try it you could die.
1000W HID lamps usually have a mutli-tap ballast option 120/208/240/277 So if you can find a source of the higher voltages it will greatly simplify your life
you could consider a capacitor in the circuit at start up that would then drop out of the circuit after start up. this is used in starting electric motors. but on 2nd thought the amp draw of your load is constant SO the correct answer is nope. you need more temp poles.
Another type of high output lighting are the Mercury vapor type that give a whiter output but they aren't cheap either.
1- Where is your outlet getting its power from and what voltage will be used for the lighting?
2- See if you can run a special sub-panel from the main panel that can give you the needed power "Safely".
3- Be sure to use at least 10 Ga wire (10/3 UF) from the panel to a 20Amp duplex weatherproof receptacle (and or switch).
Good Luck ! ! !
More Related Questions & Answers...