In order to fully understand the challenges of lighting in the Empress Theatre, it is necessary to understand the limitations imposed by the physical and electrical capacity of the theatre. Lets begin where the electrical power enters the building.
At the present time, the Empress is served by a 220v split line that divides into two 200 amp circuits within the building. One of those circuits is dedicates almost, but not quite, exclusively to lighting, while the other serves all of the electrical needs of the theatre. The breaker box in the orchestra bridge divides the lighting 200 Amp circuit in to several 20A circuits. There are one or two circuits that supply power to the bridge itself that used to be used for the lighting and sound boards when they were located there, and for power needed by the orchestra, and supply the house lights and fans.
The remaining twenty circuits are each dedicated to one dimmer pack. One 20 A circuit will supply 2400 Watts of power at 120 Volts, and the dimmer packs are rated at 2400 W. Each dimmer pack has 4 dimmers that can be controlled independantly. That provides us with a total of 80 dimmer channels. We also have 4 smaller dimmer packs, that are rated at, if I remember correctly, 300 W each. These each also have 4 independant dimmers, for a total of 16. All together we have 96 dimmers.
As I mentioned yesterday, the 6" ellipsoidal spotlights we use predominantly are lamped at 750 W. Four of them together are 3000 W, which would overload a dimmerpack if all 4 instruments go to full power at the same time. We've had to come up with some interesting work-arounds to this problem to be able to use all of the dimmers. Some of the things we've done include: programming the control board to limit each instrument to 80% power and patching the instruments into dimmers so that no more than three will need to be at full power at any given time. We use a lot of extension cords...
The 300 W packs are used to handle smaller instruments, like border strips and peanuts, or sometimes we'll use the whole pack capacity to power just one instrument at low power.
For the larger instruments, then we can use up to 80 in a show, but only 60 can be at full power at any given time. As I pointed out yesterday, it takes 36 to light the main stage's nine primary acting areas. As I will discuss in future posts, to correctly light the remaining acting spaces requires more than the 44 instrument slots available. And then there are specials and lighting for the backdrop, etc.
We have plenty of the major lighting instrument types; getting more instruments doesn't help. We need dimmers to plug them into. Getting new dimmers doesn't help without having circuits to plug them into. And adding circuits to the breaker box doesn't help unless we increase the electrical service coming in from the pole.
We actually have a bunch of 6.8kW dimmers we recently purchased from Ballet West. I think there are 90 of them. But we're not going to be able to use them until we can acquire the hardware store for a place to put them, and then rewire the electrical service for 440 V 3 phase power at about 800 A. That's a ways off yet, I think.
At the present time, the Empress is served by a 220v split line that divides into two 200 amp circuits within the building. One of those circuits is dedicates almost, but not quite, exclusively to lighting, while the other serves all of the electrical needs of the theatre. The breaker box in the orchestra bridge divides the lighting 200 Amp circuit in to several 20A circuits. There are one or two circuits that supply power to the bridge itself that used to be used for the lighting and sound boards when they were located there, and for power needed by the orchestra, and supply the house lights and fans.
The remaining twenty circuits are each dedicated to one dimmer pack. One 20 A circuit will supply 2400 Watts of power at 120 Volts, and the dimmer packs are rated at 2400 W. Each dimmer pack has 4 dimmers that can be controlled independantly. That provides us with a total of 80 dimmer channels. We also have 4 smaller dimmer packs, that are rated at, if I remember correctly, 300 W each. These each also have 4 independant dimmers, for a total of 16. All together we have 96 dimmers.
As I mentioned yesterday, the 6" ellipsoidal spotlights we use predominantly are lamped at 750 W. Four of them together are 3000 W, which would overload a dimmerpack if all 4 instruments go to full power at the same time. We've had to come up with some interesting work-arounds to this problem to be able to use all of the dimmers. Some of the things we've done include: programming the control board to limit each instrument to 80% power and patching the instruments into dimmers so that no more than three will need to be at full power at any given time. We use a lot of extension cords...
The 300 W packs are used to handle smaller instruments, like border strips and peanuts, or sometimes we'll use the whole pack capacity to power just one instrument at low power.
For the larger instruments, then we can use up to 80 in a show, but only 60 can be at full power at any given time. As I pointed out yesterday, it takes 36 to light the main stage's nine primary acting areas. As I will discuss in future posts, to correctly light the remaining acting spaces requires more than the 44 instrument slots available. And then there are specials and lighting for the backdrop, etc.
We have plenty of the major lighting instrument types; getting more instruments doesn't help. We need dimmers to plug them into. Getting new dimmers doesn't help without having circuits to plug them into. And adding circuits to the breaker box doesn't help unless we increase the electrical service coming in from the pole.
We actually have a bunch of 6.8kW dimmers we recently purchased from Ballet West. I think there are 90 of them. But we're not going to be able to use them until we can acquire the hardware store for a place to put them, and then rewire the electrical service for 440 V 3 phase power at about 800 A. That's a ways off yet, I think.
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