prolly dont count as your actual technology, but i want to find what one i need for a 5-10krig and full light/projection show…
im rubbish at numbers, so working out which one i need is a mish.
any help would be much appreciated.
PS While im here, can any one shed any light on cheap and effective ways of setting up a dj booth/ lighting rig… like where do you get scaffolding?
generator sets, power distribution, batteries for portable kit are IMO most certainly technology as much as the prettier/flashier stuff and should indeed be discussed here 😉
Without reliable power, all your high-tech equipment is little more than useless junk.
Worse still, dodgy power supplies can cause all manner of faults including equipment damage.
Most people use too little genset power for the size of their rig. This causes problems when the volume is turned up (from voltage/frequency variations to the genset actually stalling!).
Yes, people “get away” with it at the time but they often pay for it later in mysterious faults and knackered power supply circuitry on equipment.
With audio, you actually need ( as a rough amount) 7kvA-15 kVA for a rig of that size if you intend to run it at full power!
Yes, this is a lot of plant – expensive, heavy and more to maintain but due to laws of physics a 5k audio power rig needs more electric power to provide that audio output.
Some of this power is invariably lost heating up things rather than making noise. This you have to put up with at the moment – if science could stop it; we wouldn’t be having WWIII over oil resources…..
Small gensets are usually sold as 3.5kvA or 6.5kvA models – Its better to have two small ones than one big one in case of failure. In most outdoor events if one crew has genset failure others will provide at least some power, also most crews pool resources to get sufficient kvA for a large linked rig. Try to keep them filled with sufficient oil, don’t run them to the dregs of the fuel tanks, and every so often clean them with paraffin!
To work out the requirement for the lighting rig I’d need to know how much power each bit of equipment draws at 230V. this is usually marked on the kit somewhere near where the mains cable comes in (you can’t just do it using power of lamps alone as that ignores motors and control circuitry which also needs power!)
if you cannot afford that many gensets it could be better taking less rig out for outdoor events and only deploying the full kit when there is a mains supply available , rather than trying to rinse the last bit of power out of the equipment…
