Hi,

We are in the process of renovating an existing hall about 8 x 15 metres and i'm thinking of putting in some truss for the stage and hanging some lights off of it, But i'm worried
about the power requirements of the lighting system.

The person heading up the renovations has said the following for the switchboard.

"Replacement of switchboard with 50 Amp Main Circuit breaker,
CB protected lighting and power , 9-way switching of lighting
(Labeled) in line of
Asbestos remove and disposed as per Asbestos report.

My question is will 50Amps be enough considering that this has to power a sound system, heating/cooling, house lights, a small kitchen and the stage lighting.

I'm thinking of 4 par56's for now, upgrading to more in the future.

How much power does stage lighting typically require?

thanks guys

So your hall is 8 * 15m, how big is the stage that you are looking at lighting?

BTW, Welcome to CMN and your first post

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Lucas Daly
ɹǝpun uʍop puɐl ǝɥʇ ɯoɹɟ ǝɯoɔ ı

50 amps sounds like it would be pushing it for heating/cooling and a small kitchen, even without adding lighting.

When you consider that most residential homes have a service of anywhere from 100 to 400 amps.

thanks for the replies so far...

The stage will be approx 7 x 4.5 metres and the room height is about 6 metres.

Does it make a difference that the power supply in australia is 240V? with respect to the capacity of the switchboard?

A aussie!

You beauty!

I'd seriously think twice about only 50amps... I don't know much about power.

but off a single circuit at my church we can run 8par's and a 4pak dimmer without overloading anything.

spend the extra cash Now for the future.

my 0.02c

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Lucas Daly
ɹǝpun uʍop puɐl ǝɥʇ ɯoɹɟ ǝɯoɔ ı

many lights need to be on their own 20 amp breaker...but, then you don't have to load them that heavily.

I'd start the tech section with a 100 amp breaker for sound, a 200 amp breaker for lights, and a separate 200 amp breaker for the a/c and house lighting, mw/coffee pots, etc.

BTW-its usually either the microwave or the coffee pots at our banquets that breaks the bank-overloads the breakers. We've got plenty of juice for our standard setup, but they bring in lots of extras and overload the breakers.

Actually it all depends on how energy effecient your stuff is. If you are using all L.E.D. lighting then you could possibly get away with the said 50 amps for your lighting and sound but i would venture to say that your Heating/Cooling system will be 50amps alone. For a room your size it won't take alot but it will take more than 50 amps i'm sure. Just remember that 240X50=12000watts. For me that's a little more than half of my lighting rig alone not including my house lights.

crt

BTW: Welcome to CMN!

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Chad Taylor

My gut instinct would be 100-200A 3ph for lighting .. actually, my gut instinct is twice that, 200-400, for 120/208. So that's 100-200A 240V 3ph in your country.

Whether you ever do or not, plan on lamping every fixture in your rig at 1KW. Source Fours you can lamp at 575 or 750, so that gives you some extra headroom. Also plan that no light fixture will every throw wider than 60 degrees .. really, a bit tighter than that, 45-50 max for Lekos. And plan that you will always want more in future than at the start you think you'll ever need.

Also try to balance the load when you can, to make the trafo happy.

Audio you can probably do on 20A, and probably not need more than 40A (at 240). I can run our whole PA at full tilt on two 20s (at 120) with no troubles.

Just a quick note, I did the Metric-English conversion (why can't we all be the same, whatever it is? .. but that's a rant for another time); that's about 30x50 feet. A pretty small space, especially if that includes stage. You might be able to get away with less than calculated.

Remember to put the sound system and lighting system on a different breaker. If you don't you will get unpleasent hums and buzzs.

Please take the time and do it right the first time...it's not something fun to do after averything is installed.