Will strobe lights blow the fuses in my house?

<p>I told a studio photographer friend that I was thinking about setting up a home studio with strobe lights. He told me to go with battery-powered Speedlight flashes instead. He said real studio strobes need more electrical power than an average home can provide, and I would blow all the fuses in short order (unless I bought some sort of huge capacitor unit that costs at least $10,000 to store up enough of a charge).</p>

<p>Is this true? I never heard any warnings about using strobes at home until this one guy warned me about it.</p>

<p>i dont know about your house but i have used a novatron 800 ws 3 head pack in my house and 3 mobile homes with no trouble as long as you have 15 to 25 amp breakers and good wiring you should have no trouble at all.</p>

<p>Complete nonesense!</p>

<p>They fire from capacitors built into the power supply and the capacitors are charged slowly over 2 to 5 seconds. They are not fired directly from wall current.</p>

<p>A typical house-current circuit can handle 15 amps. Since Watts are calculated by multiplying volts times amps and since house-current is usually around 110 volts, the average circuit can handle 1,650 watts (110 x15 = 1,650). I you are thinking about using three 500watt strobes on one circuit, I would think that would be pushing it . </p>

<p>you also need to factor in the power setting of the strobes and considering that most homes are 'small', most half decent strobes are running at 1/4 or 1/8 power or even less. it doesn't take much power from the wall to recharge them.</p>

<p>I doubt you'll have much if any problem</p>

<p>I hope your friend, some day, realizes not only that this is silly, but also that he can give in and buy a toaster without needing industrial service from the utility.<br /><br />I use two fairly powerful monolights and a 1250w/s pack on a single 20A circuit, and have never popped the breaker. Also running a decent-sized fan, ambient lights, a laptop... all's well.<br /><br />As mentioned above, the odds of you running such strobes all at full power in a typical residential settings are very, very slim... and you can always run a 50' extension cable to another room, serviced by a different circuit breaker. But I'll bet it will never, ever be an issue.</p>

<p>LOL with friends like that you don't need enemies ROTFL</p>

<p>Unless you have several very large monoblocks running off of one fuse in your house you will be fine... when I say large I'm talking about six AB1600's all firing at once with the modeling lamps going...If you can get an arpeture small enough to deal with that much light then I think that you would be in the realm where shooting out of your house is a nonissue anyway.</p>

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<p>A typical house-current circuit can handle 15 amps. Since Watts are calculated by multiplying volts times amps and since house-current is usually around 110 volts, the average circuit can handle 1,650 watts (110 x15 = 1,650). I you are thinking about using three 500watt strobes on one circuit, I would think that would be pushing it .</p>

 

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<p>If you were talking about tungsten lights which were on all the time you would be correct but for a studio strobe/flash which charges up slowly, the continuous power consumption would be much less than this.</p>

 

<p>I used to run a 2400ws Speedotron and a 1200 at the same time. Each required a socket run from a separate fuse. On quick recharge, when the lines were 15 amps I did blow fuses once in a while. I just kept an extra box, waiting for a bit of cooloff before resuming work. When I got the lines changed to 20 amps blown fuses happened very rarely. The more modern strobes do use less power. I never blew a fuse with the most powerful Visatec monolights.</p>

<p>As already explained, your friend has this mixed up badly and came to opposite conclusion, saying:</p>

<p>"and I would blow all the fuses in short order (unless I bought some sort of huge capacitor unit that costs at least $10,000 to store up enough of a charge".</p>

<p>First, perhaps you cannot add a capacitor to an existing flash,unless the flash is a modular power pack strobe designed for it. If you managed to add a "huge capacitor" you would just increase chances to blow fuses.</p>

<p>Most modern commercial studio flashes have some minimal way of limitting max surge AC current, to make your home safer, for slow-blow type fuses.</p>

<p>He knows something saying: " He said real studio strobes need more electrical power than an average home can provide" - yeah, if you discharge 1000 Wattseconds flash in 1/1000 sec. time you will excercise the 1000 x 1000 watts of power, or a megawatt. Your flash may have more power than your home can produce, but that has nothing to do with the household electricity.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Your friend is uninformed, bad at math, or has very very bad wiring in his home. The calculation of 1650 watts on a 15 amp circuit is correct. Strobes are measured in Watt/Seconds, however, so a 2400 w/s pack will not be pulling 2400 watts-if it has a 3 second recycle time, it will be pulling 800 watts, max. I run a Speedotron 2400 and 4800 pack on a 20 amp circuit without tripping it, even at full power. If you are running 6 lights with 250 watt modeling lights on one circuit, that may not work very well, but two or three AB1600's on a circuit will be fine.</p>

<p>Well, the wiring issues aside, and not to put down the "strobist" philosophy, but battery powered speedlights...</p>

<ul>

<li>Have no modeling light. This makes aiming hair lights, flagging off hot spots on the background, etc. very difficult.</li>

<li>Can't even use most off-the-shelf modifiers (softbox, snoot, octabank, strip light, beauty dish).</li>

<li>Lack the power to drive heavy light modifiers like large softboxes, octabanks, big umbrellas.</li>

<li>Generally can't give you enough light to go to f11 or f16 at ISO 100 or 200 at portrait range even with smaller modifiers.</li>

</ul>

<p>Back to the wiring issues. Stately Wisniewski Manor was built in 1929. We have no trouble here with one 1800 WS and four 600W-S White Lightning monolights.</p>

<p>I cannot run 3 of my alienbees in the spare bedroom without blowing the breaker. I can however run 4 of them in the kitchen area. It depends on how your house is wired, i.e. what all is on the same circuit.</p>

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<p>so a 2400 w/s pack will not be pulling 2400 watts-if it has a 3 second recycle time</p>

 

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<p>Also, if it has a three second charging time, most of the time it will be sitting there drawing practically no current at all unless you are taking a shot every three seconds.</p>

<p>I see various nastinesses like this in this thread:</p>

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<p>...and a 1250w/s pack... <br>

...a 2400 w/s pack...<br>

...three 500watt strobes...</p>

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<p>Come on everyone, get with the maths. Strobe energy is measured in joules, or watt-seconds - that's watts multiplied by seconds, not watts, and definitely <strong>not </strong>w/s which would be watts divided by seconds (a not very useful measure of rate of change of power usage).</p>

<p>A few makers miss-quote the strobes caps or storage energy in w/s instead of ws; thus folks somehow get this error in their brains; and miss-quote then in w/s. I tend to correct about every thread that uses this w/s nonsense too.<br>

<br /> For an electrical engineer like me its is like fingers one the blackboard; or somebody saying the fstop is 1/25 second; or iso is 1/4-20; or they used Dektol to shoot a wedding; or theiri car gets 25 mile gallons.<br /> I wonder what a person in a job interview about photography thinks when a person uses gibberish.<br /> <br /> Watt-seconds is energy; ie Joules. That is what is in the flash capacitor before it is fired.<br>

<br /> Watts per second; ie Watts/second is the rate of change of power; like spooling up a power plant; or a transient conditon.<br>

<br /> Using W/S when talking about strobes means a listener wonders what other fundamentals the preacher has missed; like all of Physics; science; or electrical.<br>

<br /> It blows the speach; its is like if a history guru said the war of 1812 was 1865; or if a cook said water boils at 32 F; or photographer says Kodachrome is asa/iso 2000.<br>

<br /> Spineless marketing chaps who skipped science and took BS wrote these strobe specs using W/s; folks read this and repeat the gibberish as gospel. Even a homeless chap on the street knows jobs pay X dollars per hour; not dollar-hours. Maybe the ill usage of w/s can be weeded out thru education; and the the proper usage ie watt-seconds can be learned again; your basic 1959 High School MKS stuff; ie slide rule area; space program stuff; ie rocket science.</p>

<p>Most modern houses use circuit breakers; not fuses. These breakers for a single circuit are typically 20 amp or 15 amp breakers. If one used more than 20 amps on a 20 amp breaker; it trips in a few seconds if it is 25 to 30 amps; it will trip in a fraction of a second with 100 amp load. A window AC that is say 10000 BTUH might draw 10 amps at 120 volts when on; and draw 50 amps for a fraction of a second when it starts up the compressor.<br /> <br /> A "circuit" in a house means what wall plugs, lights; motors, doorbells; ie stuff is on that ONE breaker. A bedroom usually is on one circuit; a better house has it so that a tripped wallplug does NOT also turn off the room lamp.<br /> <br /> There maybe another load already beaing used on a circuit when you hook up your strobe; a wall AC sucking off 10 amps already form a 20 amp or 5 amp circuit. Or you have a hokey layout; your kid sister is using a hairdryer that is 1875 watts; and your neighbor in the apartment next door has tapped into your circuit! :)<br>

<br /> <br /> Even a house from 1920 had enough "poop" to run your strobe; it is the breakers and circuit layout that is the issue. An early house might have a just a 120 volt service; and 3 breakers of only 6 or 10 amp each; and a 30 amp entrance. With a modern 20 amp breaker the 1920 house will work; it has a 5 0r 10 Kw transformer. Later houses became 60 amps with 120 volt service; then in 1947 about 240 volts became a requirement. Houses then had 240 volts 60 amp service; then it became a minimum of 240 volt 100 amp service.<br>

<br /> <br /> One can plug in 2 or 3 toasters and make a breaker trip. One can use a skillsaw an make a breaker trip; if the circuit already has other loads. I can trip the breaker with my Stihl E20 chainsaw that is 1800 watts; it it is not a dedicated breaker for the task.<br>

<br /> <br /> One really for a good application of a bigger load should try to use a circuit that has no or few loads; thus one has the whole breaker to use. In a studio; or pro kitchen one might have many dedicated plugs; one can run many toasters; coffee makers; strobes; hot lamps and not blow breakers.</p>

<p>don't take any more photography advice from this friend.</p>