homemade ac unit

THREAD REVIVAL HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

scrog i found out that the circuit i'm on uses a 14 gauge wire, and is meant to have no more than 15amps on it at one time. there's also a washer and dryer hooked up to it, so i think to run a 600 watt comfortably i'd need a new circuit. what's your opinion?

i have a dummy question as well, to calculate amperage of a 600 watt bulb we go 600/120v right? so 5 amps? is that right?

Yup, sounds like you need to pull a new "home run" back to the panel. Re; calculating the load, if you are talking about an HID lamp you want to calculate the load of the ballast, not the bulb. It's usually printed on a sticker on the ballast. Good luck!

ScrogThis said:

Yup, sounds like you need to pull a new "home run" back to the panel. Re; calculating the load, if you are talking about an HID lamp you want to calculate the load of the ballast, not the bulb. It's usually printed on a sticker on the ballast. Good luck!

Click to expand...

yeah on the ballast there's no writing about amperage. it says:

rated voltage : AC90-260V
input frequency: 50-60Hz
power facter : >0.99
THD: <5%
ambient temp : -40~+50C

so i would think voltage depends on where i'm at, and here we got 120v in the wall, so what would be the right formula?

Generally when you are talking about AC current not DC you typically need to include your power factor; since this ballast's PF is ~1 it's not really relevant. So yes, that formula will work. Amps = Watts/Volts

Check out powerstream's web site for a better explanation.

VA=Watts (resistive load)

VA·PF = Watts (any load, including inductive loads)

Converting Volts to Amps at fixed VA

The conversion of Volts to Amps is governed by the equation Amps = VA·PF/Volts

For example 120 VA* 0.6 /110 volts = 0.65 amps