Power Requirements

[colelini00]

I am a complete newbie to this and was wondering if 1 16 channel controller would be fine on a 20 amp breaker.

[George Simmons]

Certainly should be, unless you're planning on running a higher load than that.

Welcome aboard!

[james campbell]

the contoller itself won't draw much power,so just figure out haw much your lights draw and use the 80 percent rule. also lowes or home depot sells a meter that you hook up inline and it will show what you are drawing.

[Surfing4Dough]

james campbell wrote:

the contoller itself won't draw much power,so just figure out haw much your lights draw and use the 80 percent rule. also lowes or home depot sells a meter that you hook up inline and it will show what you are drawing.

i.e. http://www.homedepot.com/buy/electrical/electrical-tools-accessories/kill-a-watt-83064.html

[dgrant]

I'm a newbie as well but as stated, its all dependant on the loads you use. If you go with LED lights, no problem at all. I believe I read the max on at any one instant on a channel is 8amps. So look at your strings, floods or devices in that respect. You could probably run a gazzillion LEDs and still not exceed the max on the controllers. I initially bought two controllers here for what I wanted to do here then the idea of arches jumped into my brain from seeing the videos here, then a mega-tree found its way in there as well...so for me, an extra 16 channels for two 8-chan arches and 32 more channels for a mega-tree. I bought one additional controller which already has three items on it therefore a total of 96 channcels already and I've not even had my first show!

[Aaron Maue]

dgrant wrote:

I'm a newbie as well but as stated, its all dependant on the loads you use. If you go with LED lights, no problem at all. I believe I read the max on at any one instant on a channel is 8amps.

To be clear, the 8-amp-per-channel limitation is that of the controller. In other words, don't attempt to draw more than 8 amps on any single channel. Surfing points out a great tool above to be sure you know how much current each channel will use before ever plugging them into your controller. Dgrant is right though. Using LEDs, for example, will avoid this issue, for the most part. For example, I'm 95% LED and run multiple controllers off each of my 20-amp outlets.

[Surfing4Dough]

Aaron Maue wrote:

dgrant wrote:

I'm a newbie as well but as stated, its all dependant on the loads you use. If you go with LED lights, no problem at all. I believe I read the max on at any one instant on a channel is 8amps.

To be clear, the 8-amp-per-channel limitation is that of the controller. In other words, don't attempt to draw more than 8 amps on any single channel. Surfing points out a great tool above to be sure you know how much current each channel will use before ever plugging them into your controller. Dgrant is right though. Using LEDs, for example, will avoid this issue, for the most part. For example, I'm 95% LED and run multiple controllers off each of my 20-amp outlets.

To clarify even further, the limit of the controller (assuming heat sinks are installed) is 8A per channel but 15A per bank of channels (1-8 and 9-16 are the 2 banks). Now don't forget that that means only what is turned on at the same time. Therefore technically you could have 8A on each channel in a bank, but would only be able to turn one on at a time since two on at once would add up to 16A (thus exceeding the 15A limit of the bank). Therefore it isn't unusual that somebody will have 40-50 amps of lights connected to a controller but just can't turn them all on at once.

Once you know the load of each channel, you can use a tool like the LOR Power Usage Utility to ensure you aren't exceeding the allowed amounts for the entire controller/circuit. http://t2lights.com/christmas/lorutility.html

Most of this is a mute point if you are using all LEDs unless you have a massive amount of lights.

[Steven]

colelini00 wrote:

I am a complete newbie to this and was wondering if 1 16 channel controller would be fine on a 20 amp breaker.

Last year I had 4 CTB16PC controllers, plus a 350W power supply with 2 CMB16D controllers, all plugged into a single 15-amp outlet. I also had the show computer, speaker amplifier, and FM transmitter on another outlet on the same 20-amp breaker. I also used an 8-amp charger for my car on the same breaker.

Was I pushing the limit? Probably. It happens that during my whole show, I don't have all the lights on at the same time for more than a couple seconds. The previous year, when I was using more incandescent bulbs, somebody said (on opening night): "Let's see what happens when you turn all the lights on at the same time!" I did, and after 3 minutes the breaker tripped. I decided not to do that again until I converted more of my display to LED.

[dgrant]

I haven't done a show yet but my static displays are probably %90 LED, possibly more. I'm not worried about my current draw but its wise to pay attention to the loads on any electrical circuit.

[Surfing4Dough]

Another thing that wasn't mentioned was that sometimes it helps if you can split up amongst multiple GFCI outlets in order to try to spread any current leak, which decreases the chance of the GFCI tripping in rain.

[Max-Paul]

Surfing,

Ya just had to open up that can of worms "Current Leak".:shock:

[big joe]

oh boy! here we go again.... ha ha