xllx Posted June 29, 2014 Share Posted June 29, 2014 I'm currently on a festival site running a rig of 4 Christie L2k1500 projectors among other things We are being fed electricity from the site electrical company running off generators. I have noticed that during the course of the day, the voltage on all three phases has dropped from 220v to 198v as shown by the meters on my lighting distro. I have also just checked the projector manual, which shows the operating voltage range for these projectors to be 200-240v. The site electricians are on the case, but they only speak Portuguese, and my interpreter is struggling a little with technical discussions! My question is does anyone know how much lower the voltage can drop before I have an issue, and how the projectors will react? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyMitchell Posted June 29, 2014 Share Posted June 29, 2014 Whilst I don't know the answer to your "how low can it go" and "what happens if/when" questions, from past experience, I'd be very wary of the situation you have described - particularly as you don't know the cause.We had a situation at an event a couple of years ago, where we saw similar low voltages to those you've described, again across all three phases, which when monitored for a while were all over the place, between 170v and 300v..We got away with a fried GEQ, others on site lost equipment too. The fault was put down to an intermittent neutral fault. Since then, everything except stage lighting runs through Furman power conditioners. We have one in every audio rack and every video rack to protect against this very scenario... in fact it was an overvoltage reading on a Furman that alerted us to the problem. Some kit is intelligent enough to detect the condition and close down. Some kit (such as a D12) logs the number of instances of overvoltage conditions encountered, whether this invalidates a warranty I guess is down to individual manufacturer policy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xllx Posted June 29, 2014 Author Share Posted June 29, 2014 Thanks for that Tony. To err on the safe side, we have shut down, and subsequently restarted when the voltage returned to normal. The only bit of kit so far to get upset has been a UPS which according to the manual switches to battery output if line voltage drops below 196v. PCs, video lighting and audio kit is all handling it without a hiccup but then most of it is rated at 100v-240v. I'd just love to know what the failure mode would be if running the projectors under voltage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Posted June 30, 2014 Share Posted June 30, 2014 I have also just checked the projector manual, which shows the operating voltage range for these projectors to be 200-240v. Interestingly, the website and datasheet states... 200-240v +/-10% ...which might mean 180-264v, or it might not. If they really do mean 200-240v then the unit doesn't meet European standards that require a unit to cope with 207-253v (230v +/-10%). Whichever it is, their information is very badly presented. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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