Site lighting with 120V receptacles

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Npstewart

Senior Member
Im working on a project where I am told the poles will have an integrated 120v receptacle. Does anyone have any experience with this? I dont have the cutsheets for the pole yet but I am trying to think this through before hand. I am assuming that the receptacle uses the same circuit as the light fixture and a neutral will be provided for the 120v however, what is confusing me is that I am feeding the light fixtures in the project with a 30A/2P CB. The only way I can see this working is if the fixture has an internal 15 or 20A OCPD for the receptacle correct?
 

mgookin

Senior Member
Location
Fort Myers, FL
Im working on a project where I am told the poles will have an integrated 120v receptacle. Does anyone have any experience with this? I dont have the cutsheets for the pole yet but I am trying to think this through before hand. I am assuming that the receptacle uses the same circuit as the light fixture and a neutral will be provided for the 120v however, what is confusing me is that I am feeding the light fixtures in the project with a 30A/2P CB. The only way I can see this working is if the fixture has an internal 15 or 20A OCPD for the receptacle correct?

It's becomming more common these days, especially for holiday lighting. You'll need to figure out if they want those receptacles always on, or switched with the lights, or switched independently of the lights.
 

Npstewart

Senior Member
This is on what I would call an "event lawn", so the receptacles would be used during the day when the lights were off. I dont see how it would be possible to run 120v to site lighting poles without having a voltage drop issue. I may have to feed a small panel closer to the lights and branch off with 120v circuits.
 

mgookin

Senior Member
Location
Fort Myers, FL
This is on what I would call an "event lawn", so the receptacles would be used during the day when the lights were off. I dont see how it would be possible to run 120v to site lighting poles without having a voltage drop issue. I may have to feed a small panel closer to the lights and branch off with 120v circuits.

Now someone needs to decide if you run one circuit with a control at each light, or two circuits with a master control for the lights.
 

steve66

Senior Member
Location
Illinois
Occupation
Engineer
I would provide separate circuits for the receptacles. You don't want all the lights to go off when someone overloads the receptacle (which they will do).

As far as voltage drop, you have to do your own design, but I see no point in trying to maintain a 2% or 3% voltage drop at full load. At places like this, sometimes you can't find a good place to put the panel close to the receptacles.

You can run quite a distance if you let the voltage drop be a little higher, and use larger wire. Also, use multiwire branch circuits so if they load up 2 or 3 circuits, the current on the neutral will cancel, and you will have less voltage drop.

Steve
 

iwire

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Massachusetts
This is on what I would call an "event lawn", so the receptacles would be used during the day when the lights were off. I dont see how it would be possible to run 120v to site lighting poles without having a voltage drop issue. I may have to feed a small panel closer to the lights and branch off with 120v circuits.

Two ways we have done it.

Very large conductors, which makes it nessary to place a hand hole at each pole base to allow us to splice on smaller conductors to enter the pole


Or transformers at each pole, when we did this the designer had specified precast concrete bases with a built in electrical enclosure to mount the transformer in.
 

Sparky3141

Member
Location
N/A
Has anyone ever seen what Npstewart is talking about? I know he didn't have the specs but has anyone seen a UL listed prewired pole with an internal fused tap for 120 volt receptacle? There could be an integral photocell between the receptacle tap and light fixture but that sounds all kinda wonky.
 
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