Portable Power Generators and Lighting

[Scott Spears]

Portable generators are almost always tricky. As Matt said, don't expect to get the full rated power. Also, remember they are noisy. I know that's obvious, but this means you have to have long power cable runs to keep the genny noise from destroying your sound. You lose power over long cable runs because of the resistance you get from the cables themselves.

Here'e another trick about many gennys. Most have standard three prong power outlets, but the problem is this one outlet is only rated for 20 amps. This means if you have a 4000 watt genny, you're only getting 2000 watts because you can't access the other 2000 watts. You need to get a twist lock adaptor for that plug. I know on 5000watt gennys this twist lock plug is rated for 30 amps (3000 watts.)

Another problem with gennys is that they can overheat if you push a lot of power through them and run for long periods of time. On a shoot many years ago, I was shooting in the desert with two 5000 watt gennys. The problem was there was no place to put both gennys where they wouldn't make too much noise. We dug a hole and put boards around one to muffle the sound. The problem is it caused the genny to overheat. We ended up putting it further away and running more cables.

Scott

[tfunch24]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Scott Spears:
Portable generators are almost always tricky. As Matt said, don't expect to get the full rated power. Also, remember they are noisy.</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

Thanks for your advice and your experiences. As I mentioned before, I am shooting silent so noise is not a problem. I will keep the cord lengths in mind. I'm still in pre-production mode on this and I'm waiting for milder weather before shooting. Right now there's seven inches of snow on the ground and it's 28 degrees out.

I will keep everyone posted on my results.

Tom

[tfunch24]

We did some test shots yesterday. We set up the genny in the basement and switched off the lights. We used the lighting setup I mentioned in my initial post and it worked fine. Generator isn't that noisy and I think we could limit the noise quite easily if we tried. As we're shooting silent, we didn't bother--we just let that mother rip.

We used 1850 watts and the generator (which is rated for 3500 watts) handled it fine.

The script has been through a third draft and it looks like it's ready to go.

Tom

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ January 12, 2003 08:50 PM: Message edited by: tfunch24 ]</font>