These three cans supplied all the power for the 250 lights. The grid then fed power to the three 500A disconnects. There was a total of 12 AC units, all mounted about 10 feet high in a plenum. It was much better to have the AC units elevated, then to install a ton of ductwork.
great work on the lectrical Tactician but I'm wondering why all the installations I've seen so far have went through the PIA receptacle route ??
If these are dedicated grows why not chop the ends off the ballast supply lines and wire them all to enclosed terminal blocks that are fed by timer boxes ??
so much easier to with terminal strips ,you can feed em with relays and a trigger timer
as well easily .
I'm thinking since you're using mag ballasts and the power supply cords are not plug n play like digis must be your reasoning ??
quick n easy ballast swap if one takes the piss...
Thanx Shrpshooter, the PLC (programmable logic controller) makes it possible to switch 1 oe 2 lights at a time, with delays from 1/100 second to minutes, it's all programmed into the PLC. You can also select both rooms to do an 18/6 veg cycle. For 18 hours of on period, both rooms each get 6 hours of all the lights on, and the other 12 hours, the lights rotate with only half on per side, but those lights switch 1 at a time about 5 minutes apart.
A link cable is available to power of each ballast when a flip cycle is required. The ballasts can be powered off for a few seconds or several minutes, all programmable.
These things are expensive, but I've noticed the electrical and fire inpsectors I work with HATE cap, powerbox, horticontrol, lightspeed, pretty much any OTS controllers. They always ask why doesn't the onsite electrican just built to suit the needs of the grower, from breaker sizes and selection, to running cable/conduit. Mount loadcenter, receptacles, nema boxes, etc and run conduit between, then it looks nice and neat.
At what point does a PLC make sense. I mean, obviously it is helpful for a 65K operation, but what about 3-4K? Would you still recommend building all your load centers and flip boxes to suit? Or just buy em at that point?These things are expensive, but I've noticed the electrical and fire inpsectors I work with HATE cap, powerbox, horticontrol, lightspeed, pretty much any OTS controllers. They always ask why doesn't the onsite electrican just built to suit the needs of the grower, from breaker sizes and selection, to running cable/conduit. Mount loadcenter, receptacles, nema boxes, etc and run conduit between, then it looks nice and neat.
Let's hope that stuxnet doesn't fry that Siemens PLC.Siemens, Omron, etc make PLCs