Guest guest Posted January 23, 2006 Share Posted January 23, 2006 Here is a question that I haven't come across yet. I plan on buying around 5 hobbyist 16 channel (40 Amp Capability) or 5 16 channel showtime (30 Amp Capability) Controllers. My question is this. Does this mean that I have to add 10 more 15 or 20 Amp individual circuits to my current power grid? or could I even get away with 1,2, or 5 circuits. I plan on using around 5 mini strings on each channel. with them on at some point for en extended period of time. That would be around 13.6 Amps (per "side") but would only amount to around 40 strings. currently I can put around 80 on a circuit (20 Amps) Does this mean that I could get away with running 5 new circuits dedicated to my lighting control? I hope I made this clear. If I can clarify anything please post it.ThanksKen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted January 23, 2006 Share Posted January 23, 2006 LOR controllers do not use verry much power. So IF you had all those lights before you should be ok now. The only problem would be what your house circut can hold, check the breaker that you use for your lights and youll find the amp capacity on it.--Daniel L Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted January 23, 2006 Share Posted January 23, 2006 abigroot wrote: That would be around 13.6 Amps (per "side") but would only amount to around 40 strings. currently I can put around 80 on a circuit (20 Amps) Does this mean that I could get away with running 5 new circuits dedicated to my lighting control? I hope I made this clear. If I can clarify anything please post it.Your math is a little fuzzy to me. If 13.6amps is 40 strings, then 80 strings is 27.2. According to my math, 27.2 is greater than 20. I'm not saying your wrong, and you may have it all worked out.I'll focus on "That would be around 13.6 Amps (per "side")" If you have 13.6 amps on each side, then each side will end up using a 20amp breaker all its own. From what I gather, you would need a total of 10, 20 amp circuits.On my display, I was able to keep my amps down to under 20 per board. This let me install 5, 20amp circuits for my display. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted January 23, 2006 Share Posted January 23, 2006 Hi,... I you currently have 8,000 mini lights on a 20 amp circuit then the mini-lights are probably 0.25 amps or less.As far as LOR is concerned (except for one thing which I will explain) you can run the same number of lights with the existing power outlets on your house. So if you can run all of your lights today without LOR then you can run that same number with LOR.Here is the fine print.... Today you can pretty much plug anything in anywhere so you can carefully balance your load across all the outlets. When you go with LOR you will have less grainularity... Each 8 channels on LOR usually has a plug so... if for example you put 12 amps of lights on each (8 channel segment), you can only plug one of those segments into a 20 amp plug... This leaves 8 amps unused on each circuit so you would end up needing more circuits (not more actual power just more circuits).... Usually this can be worked around and you do not end up with so much unused capacity on each circuit.Also a good rule of thumb it to only load no more than 90% of the capacity on the circuit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted January 23, 2006 Share Posted January 23, 2006 Thanks dan. That helps. as far as my math. I am currently running 80 mini strings off of one 20 amp circuit. as far as how many amps per string, I would have to check, Dan is probably right, they might be .25 amps each. I am probably really close to maxxing out the circuits as it is. we will just have to check when I get home. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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