People that have done outdoor parties with no power, what have you used?

[manchild]

I mean like you said, all you might need is like 30a. You realize thats only 3600 watts @ 120v, right? 10,000 watts seems like a little overkill, no? A lot of portables around 3-5kw range come with multiple 120v 20a outlets all protected on their own breaker. No need for distribution panels and the time and money that goes into that.

As far as grounding goes, both hot leg coils off the generator are center tapped at a single point and then bonded to the frame of the generator, from the frame of the generator you usually get your ground (could technically come off the center tap too), and from the center tap you get your neutral. You won't get a better more stable ground if you bond it to the earth. Your equipment is no better off. This is basically how 1 phase transformers for houses are grounded too, except instead of bonding the hot legs that are center tapped to a frame, it goes straight from the center tap of the transformer to the earth. The earth now becomes a big conductor back to the source. In theory if you have a large enough fault to earth and the service neutral is cut or somehow not part of the fault, you could still get a short circuit and a breaker/fuse could trip/blow since the earth is now a conductor back to the source. Under normal circumstances, most of the current from a ground fault short circuit is going to pass thru the service neutral since that is going to have the least resistance.

Anyways, GFCI or even no GFCI's, in a cord and plug application like this, it just doesnt make sense to make the earth part of the grounding system for safety, and as for the protection of equipment, in this situation, it doesnt even impact it, as it's almost unrelated, as an earth bond and equipment ground are different. I mean even OSHA says you dont need to do this.

[Vandalus]

So I'd say it would be fairly loud. Not like earth shattering, but pretty dang loud.

Thanks for the info about the generators. I'll have to look into some that can produce that type of power.

I mean I'm looking at probably renting like CDJ 10002/2000s djm 800

PA speaker (no idea what size yet)
Amp, sub.

Lighting truss, and lights to go on it.

I can't let the cat out of the bag on the event I am throwing yet cause its confidential and I don't think my co-founder friend would want me to spill the beans. But we are looking at some locations that will either end up at outdoor locations, some will be power provided, some won't possibly. It depends on how we plan it. I need to create a budget for either buying or renting the equipment. I'm sure if I contacted these rental places they probably have a package deal that I could rent that would probably be fail safe, I'm assuming at least.

Regarding the generator, that was the only snag cause I'm not sure the places I could rent the DJ, sound and lighting equipment would also have generators available. I thought I may have to rent something like that from a hardware place or something.

Sounds exciting. Are you planning for this to take place in or around the bay area? Keep me posted!

[Vandalus]

I mean like you said, all you might need is like 30a. You realize thats only 3600 watts @ 120v, right? 10,000 watts seems like a little overkill, no? A lot of portables around 3-5kw range come with multiple 120v 20a outlets all protected on their own breaker. No need for distribution panels and the time and money that goes into that.

As far as grounding goes, both hot leg coils off the generator are center tapped at a single point and then bonded to the frame of the generator, from the frame of the generator you usually get your ground (could technically come off the center tap too), and from the center tap you get your neutral. You won't get a better more stable ground if you bond it to the earth. Your equipment is no better off. This is basically how 1 phase transformers for houses are grounded too, except instead of bonding the hot legs that are center tapped to a frame, it goes straight from the center tap of the transformer to the earth. The earth now becomes a big conductor back to the source. In theory if you have a large enough fault to earth and the service neutral is cut or somehow not part of the fault, you could still get a short circuit and a breaker/fuse could trip/blow since the earth is now a conductor back to the source. Under normal circumstances, most of the current from a ground fault short circuit is going to pass thru the service neutral since that is going to have the least resistance.

Anyways, GFCI or even no GFCI's, in a cord and plug application like this, it just doesnt make sense to make the earth part of the grounding system for safety, and as for the protection of equipment, in this situation, it doesnt even impact it, as it's almost unrelated, as an earth bond and equipment ground are different. I mean even OSHA says you dont need to do this.

Exhibit A why I relegate electrical tasks to electricians when it gets real. I literally understood about 5% of what you just wrote. I hear electrical burns sting...

[djlotus]

LOL. the burns don't sting, but getting hot does if it's over 120v.

I know it's a little over kill but in my experience it's better that way. A lot of people prefer to not have the sound and lights on the same circuit yada yada yada.

Just what I would do that's all. I used to take a pull behind with me to the river and run my decks and a couple JBLs with no issues. Sounded like the OP needed more power than he realizes.

[Louie_V]

Get power conditioners... For Everything!

[Otacon]

solar power!! forget generators, use the sun to power all your needs

[aviax]

Just actually finished doing an outdoor stage at a small festival.
Decent sized rig for 100-200 people. Could double up on the speakers if you where allowed to really push the sound, but that depends on your location and permitting. If you where to do that though, you'd like want to have a total of 9-10kW to play with.
We had:
Power:
7600W Gen
Tons of cabling
Sound:
2x 21000W subs
2x 800W mid-highs
2x Monitors
Gear:
DJM600
2x cdj1000
1 sub mixer to control actual volume
laptops
Lighting:
6 80W professional LED bars
1 projector
1 fog machine
1 carpet fan for fog machine
2 colour changing LED bulbs
1 desktop pc/monitor controlling VJ stuff

[DJ Abide]

If you can afford CDJ-2000's you can probably afford something from these guys. LOL

http://www.makanipower.com

[Bassline Brine]

Well this was brought up a LONG time ago, in this thread: http://forum.djtechtools.com/showthread.php?t=31770

That being said, it's really going to take some calculations as to what you are going to be drawing for power. Or you can just get a generator that will be complete overkill and not have to worry about it, but it's not cheap to do so.

The super-quiet generators are probably something you're going to be after. As, generators can make a hell of a racket, and you don't want to have it completely competing with your sound.

http://powerequipment.honda.com/gene...iet-generators

I don't really know the first thing about this kind of stuff. I really like the idea, and did look into it, but I have different priorities for myself than being able to have an outdoor mobile setup at the moment, so all I did was fill myself with knowledge and not act on it :P

A lot of those LED lights and such won't draw much power, but the brighter lights generally are NOT LED. So make sure you really keep an eye on what you're buying if you want to have it be able to run off of a generator.


.... also get some chains and padlock and some stupid heavy weights so people don't walk off with shit. Generators are made to be fairly easy to move, and they are expensive, and you can't trust people with that kind of thing unless you're on top of it the whole time.