Powering one billion lightbulbs

dougspice

dougspice

Veteran
Okay, maybe not a billion, but a hundred or two. My concern here is power, safety, and the basic logistics of "where the hell do all those cords go?"
 
Hmm....well, of course the first thing to ask is how many watts, and what type of bulbs? Remember that for every 100 watts there is approximately 1 amp of power drawn, so for 1000 watts, that would be 10 amps. But you ALWAYS want to give yourself some overhead. So for 1000 watts, I would give it 15-20 amps. As for the cords, I suppose you could build some sort of power distro system with some 10 or 12 guage power cord, and some edison wall sockets built into boxes....or something like this:

http://cinemasupplies.stores.yahoo.net/dad100ft.html

Anyhow, hope that helps!
 
need more info. Are we talking LED's? christmas lights? Brewers chord? What are you trying to achieve ????:huh:
 
I was talking like actual tabletop-style tungsten bulbs. For instance, those sockets on a cable that Ikea sells for like $2, with over-the-shelf bulbs.
 
Umm, that's still $2,000,000,000

... what's you cabling budget?




It would be helpfull for you to elaborate on your needs a little more so that we can help you better.

- Mikko
 
Yes, it would be helpful. Unfortunately I'm just brainstorming right now, trying to figure out what's possible. But here, maybe this conceptual description would work:

I want to hang many, many, many lights. Maybe in a studio, maybe on a bridge or over a road. I'm trying to find out if there's anything like a Christmas light, but with much bigger bulbs in plain white/yellow, but I haven't seen anything definite. Something like that seems very European to me somehow... I'm sure it must exist.

Also, speaking of Europe, I really like Helsinki.
 
I was in a little italian place the other day for lunch, and noticed these GE 25W / 34V "Christmas Tree" style string lights hanging from the ceiling. I thought the low voltage thing was cool! They might work well for something like this...

BTW, Lance Acord shot the movie "Marie Antoinette" this way -- by using hundreds (or maybe even thousands) of these little 40W incandescent light bulbs attached to large frames. He also created long strings of lights to stretch across the ceilings (inspired by Christmas lights, to be sure) in addition to using small "chinese lantern" inspired lights for fill (using only the bare bulbs, without the paper lantern). There's an article about it in American Cinematographer, October '06.
 
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