I saw U2 on Sat. night and they have a giant stage, big light show and giant sound system. Does the stadium have to do anything special in order to provide this much power? It seems to me that is way beyond what the stadium normally needs. The only thing that comes close is the stadium lights and of course those are shut down during the concert. Do they install temporary transformers or cables for a concert?
It’s entirely possible that the stadium’s electrical system was built with gobs of “extra” capacity beyond what’s normally used for lighting, and the concert production crew just has to plug in. I wouldn’t expect this in any but the most recently built stadiums.
Or, as you said, the field lighting is shut off during the performance. This may be enough to run a concert on an existing electrical system.
However, it’s probably more likely that the concert producers bring in their own generators as a known quantity. They know how well they’ve been maintained, so they’re dependable, and they know that if the want to plug a lighting controller or whatever into a receptacle labeled 60 amps, that they will in fact be able to get 60 amps out of it without tripping a circuit.
I remember wondering about this many years ago (back in 1979) when a bunch of musicians staged a “no nukes” (and they meant nuclear power generation) concert at Madison Square Garden and Battery Park. I remember thinking it was kind of funny, all these musicians in a giant hall, with a light show and everything, using massive amounts of electricity to get their message (insofar as there was a message beyond incoherent feel-good stuff) across.
And I’d bet they were taking a good part of the power they used from New York’s Indian Point nuclear plant.
Oddly, John Hall, one of the performers at (and, I believe, organizers of) that concert is now a Democratic congressman representing the district in which Indian Point is located. He still wants to shut it down.
Well, the Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound was rated at 26,400 watts RMS (Today’s horn-based systems may be louder but are definitely more efficient.) That’s only 60 Amps at 440VAC, so I doubt that any venue designed with music in mind would fail to have that much power on hand. After all, most homes are built with 200 Amp/220 Volt services–the Wall of Sound might be able to tie into a home service panel and not blow the main breaker. I’m leaving lighting out of the equation; I assume that the requirements are roughly the same.
[tangentially relevant tangent] Power was one of the reasons why Van Halen had the infamous “No brown M&Ms” clause in their contract. Van Halen was one of the first major acts to travel to minor markets, and the venues in the smaller towns weren’t used to the requirements of a large act. With the M&M rider, the band manager could walk backstage, take a quick look at the buffet and see whether the venue had actually read the contract.[/trt]
Bands will generally use truck mounted generators in a redundant arrangement.
There are several reasons for this:
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The electrical system at the venue becomes irrelevant. No worries about if it can handle the load, no need to send out an engineer prior to figure out how to hook into it. The owner of the venue doesn’t have to worry about damage or overloading his other systems.
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The roadies hook the same equipment into the same power sources each night. No ‘redesign’ in Wichita because there isn’t a 50A 240V power source at the left end of the stage (for example).
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Redundancy, nothing worse than losing power in the middle of ‘Satisfaction’ so there are at least two generators running together in parallel each of which can handle the load.
Some Googling suggests that a decent-sized stadium would probably have at least 250,000 watts of lighting, and perhaps substantially more. If these were not on, more than enough should have been available for the act.
I work on the electrical team at a music festable in Monterey every year. On a extreamly large on, one year over 20,000 on Saturday night. We hook into shore power with three transformers. 150 KVA for video, 300 KVA for sound, and 450 KVA for lighting.
Providing that kinda of power from a stadium main panel would not be a problem.
If a show is using two generators I would doubt that they are running parallel. But one is probably being used for lights and the other for audio and video. If the audio and video are on the same power source as the lights there will be some buzzing interferance.
Before a stage crew connects to house power they will check voltage for each leg to ground and neutral, voltage between the ground and the neutral…
A new stadium will probably have power panels through out the building with cam lock connections for show use. The show crew will just have to plug in and go.
Um…you know that was the total wattage of the output of the amplifiers, not the wattage the amplifiers drew to produce those watts. The amplifiers the infamous Wall of Sound used were principally McIntosh MC2300s, and it required 1400 watts to drive two 300 RMS channels, or less than 50% efficiency.
Most modern stadiums need power for much more than just the lights. At sports arenas especially, there will be scoreboards, Jumbotrons, LED wraparound banners, and loudspeakers. Power is also needed to run concession/food stands, climate control, etc., etc., etc. Touring bands may very well bring their own power along, but any modern stadium should be well-equipped in to provide a serious amount of power.
Still, even at 50% efficieny 26,000 Watts output needs 52,000 Watts of electric input. Which is only 500 standard light bulbs. They probably use more than that just to light the interior hallways and offices of the stadium. High-powered field lights are going to be way beyond that.
Bottom line is that sound doesn’t require that much power, compared to (incadescent) lighting.
Well, I have actually been to a concert where the power went out, so I know that it’s possible. I saw Genesis in Kemper Arena in Kansas City back around 1984-ish and right in the middle of the show the power went out. I don’t know whether it was the band pulling too much power that caused the outage or if it was something else in the area (the proverbial squirrel in a transformer) but there was about a half hour delay until the show resumed. Mr. Collins was definitely none too happy about it.