Now Available! 2nd Edition of

Electricity for the Entertainment Electrician & Technician

February 17 marks the launch of the revised book about powering live event productions safely and efficiently

 

About a year ago, I started updating Electricity for the Entertainment Electrician & Technician. Today is the official launch date! 

What's new in the book? In a word, lots. Although the fundamentals of electricity don't change, our practices do. So this edition has new information about electrical safety, new types of loads, like LEDs and video displays, and how they affect our power distribution systems. It also has new information about other power sources like portable power generators and batteries. 

People often ask me if they should buy the new edition if they already have the old, and to that, I say, "Does electricity travel uphill?" If you don't know the answer to that question, you should probably get the book. If you do know the answer, get it anyway.

Dear Swami,

 

Rehearsals had just finished and the doors were scheduled to open shortly after dinner. The followspot supplier had instructed us that if we were going to leave the followspots idle for an hour or more, then it would be best to douse the lamps to save lamp life. We were hungry and we were going to take dinner for an hour. Should we have doused the lamps in the followspots? They were xenon lamps.

 

Signed,

Hungry

 

Dear Hungry,

 

A discharge lamp like xenon is ignited with a very high voltage across the electrodes. That ionizes the gas fill and causes an arc to jump from electrode to electrode. When the arc strikes the electrode it causes pitting and erosion. As the electrodes erode, the arc gap widens, and eventually it becomes too large to sustain an arc. So striking the lamp shortens its life.

 

How much it shortens lamp life is not easy to know but a factory rep used to say that every lamp strike costs about an hour or more of life. So it's quite possible that dousing the lamp actually uses more lamp life. And striking the lamp is hard on the lamp. If it's near its end of life, striking it could just do it in. I think you're better off leaving them on.

 

Here's some more great information about xenon lamps:

 

http://www.sqpuv.com/PDFs/TechnicalSpecificationGuide.pdf

http://assets.sylvania.com/assets/documents/fo_warning1.9622c328-cc0b-45a4-89a9-57f3fca9b7a7.pdf

http://www.film-tech.com/warehouse/tips/xenonfailure/XENONFAILURE.pdf 

 

Sincerely,

Swami Candela of the Third Millennium

 

To send a question to Swami Candela, click here.

Choose your voltage, choose the number of problems you want to work, and go to town on the new APT Power Practice app. The free app serves up practice problems, reviews the results, gives you the correct answers, and provides you with your score.

Or try the Ohm's Law Practice App.

 

 

To sign up now, click here.

For more information, click here.

Don't miss PLASA Focus Nashville at the Nashville Municipal Auditorium in downtown Nashville on February 18 & 19, 2014. The Professional Development Program will include free seminars with the leading professionals of live event production.