3 phase vs single phase lighting circuit

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mbrooke

mbrooke

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Say you're running some drivers at 208 volts. Do you run 3 single phase circuits or one 1 phase circuit? Which is cheaper?
 
If you have the option to run 208 single phase, and you have many lights... why not run 1 circuit instead?
 
You get slightly better copper use if you distribute your loads across 3 phases rather than have single phase circuits.

Say you have 6 wires carrying 20A. This is either 3 single phase circuits or 2 three phase circuits. This gives you: 3 x 208 x 20 = 12480 VA or 2 x 208 x 20 x 1.732 = 14,410 VA.

This difference is large enough to be significant, but is probably dominated by things like switching requirements.

Jon
 
winnie said:
You get slightly better copper use if you distribute your loads across 3 phases rather than have single phase circuits.

Say you have 6 wires carrying 20A. This is either 3 single phase circuits or 2 three phase circuits. This gives you: 3 x 208 x 20 = 12480 VA or 2 x 208 x 20 x 1.732 = 14,410 VA.

This difference is large enough to be significant, but is probably dominated by things like switching requirements.

Jon
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Thank you for this perspective :)
 
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