Cable sizing

Basher85

Hi, I've been asked to wire a set of floodlights for a local football club. As I'm use to house bashing and only smaller jobs commercially and industrially I would have much requirement for calculating cable size. The cable is in underground ducting. The longest run is 230 meters and the pole will have 8 x 1600w led lights.

2011

Well this will have to start with a design. How do you plan to achieve this? I imagine that it would not be desirable to have all 8 floodlights one on circuit as you would be introducing a single point of failure and putting them all on one phase.

The total load is 12.8 kW. If it were me I would consider running a 3 phase + N supply to a local distribution board. Then from there I would be able to have 3 floodlights on one phase, 3 on the next phase and 2 on the final phase. I would also consider 20% (or thereabouts) future capacity on the cable to the sub distribution board. Another consideration is how are the floodlights to be switched and from where?

Maybe the above is not practical, only you can advise.

Basher85

Hi, initially I was planning on requesting an esb upgrade, at the minute they have a single phase 20kva supply. I was going to try up it to a 30 kva supply. However the nearest 3 phase supply is a good distance away and will cost over €20,000 to bring to the club, so I am considering a 20 kva 3 phase generator.

Supplying lights from generator to mini pillar and then with seperate 3 phase cable to each pole. But open to ideas

0lddog

What way do the costs look if you price up a config using LED floodlights ?

Think I saw Phillips show them at an exhibition ...

Basher85

Old Dog
It depends on the lux required by the club but for supply of bolts, columns and lamps:
120 lux expandable to 250 lux approx €50k
250 lux not expandable approx €85k
250 lux expandable to 400 lux approx €100k
400 lux not expandable approx €140k
Al

evosteo

Id imagine you will need an engineer to survey and create a plan. There maybe options your not aware of at the minute, plus it will take a huge amount of responsibility off your shoulders going forward if there were any design issues and you were liable.

Xwebstar2

Pass on it

I did some of this work and there's a lot of planning, design and installation

Reality is they're trying to save a few quid dumping this on you

tweek84

If you talk to a lighting supplier they will do a light design for you based on your requirements, if they can't do that go to a different supplier there are specialist lighting companies that deal with this.
You have to find out the requirements for the pole location of the pitch for wind etc, drop mast or other, electric or manual winch, base requirements for the pole (I have seen base bolt kits costing 300euro for the certain poles, this pole had 6 lights) it's not cheap.
I have done bits of work along this line, you might have watched some games on TV with my lights.
If you require anymore information let me know.