Cultivation Facility Amperage Requirements

[jms-lbh]

I own a warehouse cultivation facility and am leasing it up to tenants. It's about 95k SF; about 40% of that will be going to warehouse/distribution and about 60% will be going toward cultivation. I'm now learning that some of the cultivators may have some amperage requirements that may exceed what I'm able to provide. I'm hoping to double check their numbers and am doing some research. In combination with my own research, I was wondering if anyone has knowledge of cultivation facilities and what sort of per SF amperage I should be anticipating. My facility is also equipped for 3-phase and I think some of my tenants may be providing their requirements based on a 1-phase system (though they have engineers working for them, they, like me, are not engineers themselves). I know 3-phase is more efficient. Is there a good way convert between the two on paper and explain those efficiencies to my tenants?

Thanks in advance everyone. I really appreciate your help.

 

[ptonsparky]

Have you thought about hiring one?

 

[Jraef]

LOL...”cultivation facility”... Is that the new euphemism for a pot farm?

If you don’t know if their loads are single phase or three phase, you can’t know anything else. It has to start there. There will undoubtedly be a mixture even if the majority are three phase. Once you know, convert everything to kVA on both sides of the problem. Single phase loads are V x A / 1000, three phase loads and your three phase service are V x A x 1.732 / 1000. On the load side, add all of the kVA values together. If your supply kVA > their total load kVA, you are good to go. The rest becomes details on their part of balancing their loads across the three phases.

That said, you or they REALLY should hire a pro that understands all of this, there is a lot more to it than just that. I just looked at a grow op where they did everything on their own and installed VFDs on all of the air circulating fans, they made a LOT of mistakes that are causing premature failures of the VFDs and fan motors. But after the fact, the solutions are going to be very expensive, whereas they would have been simple and cheap had they known before jumping in head first.

 

[Seven-Delta-FortyOne]

They will need to give you their information.

Some guys run 1000 watts lights, some run 600

How many dehums? How many fans? What kind?

I did one where the guy wouldn’t, or couldn’t, give me his specs. I was back three times changing it for him. Cost him a lot of money

Some stuff will run on 208, some needs 240.

Some is multi voltage. Some of those lights will run on 277.

 

[electrofelon]

I own a warehouse cultivation facility and am leasing it up to tenants. It's about 95k SF; about 40% of that will be going to warehouse/distribution and about 60% will be going toward cultivation. I'm now learning that some of the cultivators may have some amperage requirements that may exceed what I'm able to provide. I'm hoping to double check their numbers and am doing some research. In combination with my own research, I was wondering if anyone has knowledge of cultivation facilities and what sort of per SF amperage I should be anticipating. My facility is also equipped for 3-phase and I think some of my tenants may be providing their requirements based on a 1-phase system (though they have engineers working for them, they, like me, are not engineers themselves). I know 3-phase is more efficient. Is there a good way convert between the two on paper and explain those efficiencies to my tenants?

Thanks in advance everyone. I really appreciate your help.

I have done a few. Based on my experience, for some ballpark numbers: A 50 X 75 room would have about 112 1000W lights, figure about 1100W draw each. HVAC would be 30-40 tons. Figure 2kw per ton MCA with actual draw being 2/3 of that.

You will want 480 three phase for this, avoid the 208/240 trap.

 

[jms-lbh]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I have hired an engineer, but your responses have been great for me to get a better understanding of what is going on in my building. I also just like to do a back-of-envelope analysis of what my tenants give me while I wait for my engineer to get back to me.

As a follow-up question: if I'm given the Watts and Voltage, is there a way to convert between 1-Phase Amps and 3-Phase Amps? I'm assuming power factor is unity and line to neutral. Again, this is for my own understanding - an engineer will be reviewing this as well.