Outdoor Event Temporary Power Set up

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iwire

iwire

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I am involved with providing temp power for an outdoor event. Figured some here would find it interesting. Plus I am board hanging out.:cool:

We have two gensets on site.

This is the smaller one, in Pic 1 you can see the generator output, L1, L2, L3, N on left, EGC and GEC on right.

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From there a set of 2/0 feeders run to this tap, here we tapped into the 200 amp feeder with cam lock 'T's into a 100 amp stage type plug
sm2.jpg


That 100 amp single phase tap feeds this distribution box, this one takes the 120 volt 100 amp feeder and runs it through 20 amp fuses to 5 single outlets
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In other areas we used this nicer box that does pretty much the same thing but has breakers instead of fuses
sm4.jpg


The 2/0 feeder keeps going, makes a road crossing
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From there we tap at 200 amps to another kind of distro box, this is also single phase but 208/120. There are breakers in it and from there we run MWBCs out to outlets. Leaving this box are 10/4 SO cords that run out to boxes that break out the twist lock MWBC into standard 120 volt duplex outlets at the tables.
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Now the last major stop of this feeder, this box takes the 200 amp 3 phase feeder and breaks it out into 6 - 100 amp 120 volt feeders. There are 100 amp single pole breakers on the other side of this box. At the other end of these 100 amp feeders are more breakout boxes as above.
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This is the bigger of the two gensets we have on site.

This one is actually two complete gensets on one trailer. They can be operated independently or in parallel depending on the needs. It can be set up so that is one set fails it transfers right over to the other. That is how we are using it.

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Here are the twin controls
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Here you can see all the output connections and our two feeders
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Here is a better shot of the connections, there are two set ups like this that can be tied or independent. The total over current protection for each generator is 225 amps so it is not likely you would ever use all these connectors
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From there two sets of 4/0 leave and head different directions
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One set heads this way
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To supply this portable panel
BG9.jpg
 
All 30 circuits of this panel are connected to L21-20 twist locks so each cable leaving it has three - 20 amp circuits in a MWBC.
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Those cords in turn supply these breakout boxes that can be daisy chained if you want.
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Each of these three phase break out boxes have 3 duplex outlets, one duplex per phase and the outlets are colored to match the phasing, black red blue.
bg11.jpg
 
Cool. I find all the cam lock connectors, outlet boxes, and distribution panels interesting because I'm in the middle of a project were we are supplying several blocks of a downtown area with power distribution for similar panels.

We're installing service locations where the POCO can install and remove the meter to connect or disconnect power. Those locations would have 6 or 8 breakers that feed 100 or 200 amp cables ran underground to handholes.

The wires in the handholes terminate in cam lock connectors. So if someone has an "event", they can bring in temporary distribution panels, connect then via camlocks at the handholes, and run their distribution from there.

We have one yearly event that, according to the POCO, draws enough power to drop the voltage on the downtown grid a noticable amount.

Have you ran into any major problems or hurdles??
 
steve66 said:
Have you ran into any major problems or hurdles??
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None, but that goes back to me hiring a company that does this stuff all the time. They have the equipment and experience to do it. When I was approached to do this work it became immediately a apparent that our typical construction site temp set ups would not be any good at all for this.



This is the second year we have done it and the real trick was finding the right company to use.

I lucked out and found 'High Output' they have been nothing but helpful and professional, but they are not cheap. http://www.highoutput.com/
 
iwire said:
This is the second year we have done it and the real trick was finding the right company to use.

I lucked out and found 'High Output' they have been nothing but helpful and professional, but they are not cheap. http://www.highoutput.com/
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They look like the perfect outfit to help me with my Memorial Day bar-b-cue plans. I wonder how far they travel?
 
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That reminds me of my IATSE days.

Large theaters use the same type of cables and color coding. I was embarrassed to call myself an electrician because all I did electrically was to plug stuff in that matched in color. Figuring out how to get all the cables back into the cases and get the lid shut was more complex than pulling them out and hooking them up!

Did you try to heft any of those 4/0 flexible cables around? I think one container box of them weighed about 800 lbs. Good thing that not only did the containers have wheels, they were also moveable by forklift.
 
Nice setup, reminds me of some jobs last summer :). Event wiring is "easy" if you have the right stuff (and if you have helpers to haul the 4/0 around, I'm not built for that). I do question the use of 100a Bates plugs and those plugging boxes, though. Was that necessity or just because they were on the truck and available?
 
zbang said:
Nice setup, reminds me of some jobs last summer :). Event wiring is "easy" if you have the right stuff (and if you have helpers to haul the 4/0 around, I'm not built for that). I do question the use of 100a Bates plugs and those plugging boxes, though. Was that necessity or just because they were on the truck and available?
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This event was very spread out, we used a ton of cables so I think it may have been a case of what they had available.
 
jap said:
What kind of event is this?
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It was a show for vendors to demonstrate / display / offer their products to supermarket managers and employees.

That results in a lot of hotplates, microwaves, small ovens, griddles, refrigerators, freezers etc.
 
I used to be pretty heavily involved in that industry. Starting when I was about 14 years old, humping cables for my dad so I could get back-stage passes into the concerts. Then I moved into site supervision, where I had other grunts humping the cable for me. And then into project management where I planned the layout of the distribution system for the event. (Although still going to school for E.E.).

The biggest project I had was also about the last one I did before getting out of field work. It was for the US Senior Open, and I think there was over a dozen different generator locations spread across an entire golf complex, feeding into several dozen distribution panels before reaching the final loads. Our staging area alone was the size of a football field. Depending on the density of the power requirements, some of these micro-sites started out with 1200A I-line distribution panels feeding into 200/400/800 amp distribution panels.

Please don’t be offended, but those pictures are not representative of what this industry has been like for several decades. That's because you can't be competitive in this industry with a kluge setup like that. What's shown is technology from the pre-1980's.

Even the quadboxes from the late 1970's were already rubberized. This is a new one, but the same thing already existed and was common in the late 70's.

QuadBox.jpg

That cube distribution box is actually a Walther modular distribution panel, and represents 2nd or 3rd generation distribution, but even that is over a decade old. I even have a couple of these laying around in my garage gathering dust. This one is a 200 amp distribution panel into 50-amp outputs.(Oops, that flip-top is from a competitor, but I forgot their name.)

CL200-Panel.jpg

By the 90's distribution got advanced enough that the larger companies realized that they needed to protect themselves more. I reached back to my high-school-day-roots and developed a power distribution tester to examine the equipment before it was placed in the field. A business acquaintance of mine from back then stumbled across a project site, and snapped this picture for me. It's a picture of one of my testers out in the wild. It's "well used" by this point, but these companies used it to verify their equipment before they put it into service at large project sites.

What is interesting, is that this East-Coast company (where you are located) chose to use IEC connectors for their equipment to reduce theft. Other companies wouldn't steal their cables because the connectors were useless. (Back then, the connectors were more valuable than the copper.)

ES_Dolly_lo.jpg

The last one of these testers I built was for a manufacturing company that I eventually ended up doing some design work for, in designing new portable power distribution systems. They manufactured everything from the huge I-line panels down to the single 20 amp quad boxes. Their tester even included load-banking. (No, I really have little desire to make any more of these because the front-end design is not worth the time.)

R5-sm-lo.jpg LB.jpg

One of their biggest sellers was the 200/400-amp modular distribution panel. It is based on the Square-D, QO backplane, and the output plates were modular for a variety of configurations. It's not field-configurable, but at the factory, it can be quickly changed between L21-20's up to dual 4/0 cam-locks with the same enclosure.

PC113270.jpg
 
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