/
Electricity Basics

Electricity Basics

May 09, 2012

  • House has CIRCUITS, tied to the main breaker box. Each breaker represents a circuit.

  • Breakers each have a fixed number of AMPS (amperes) that can be drawn from the circuit. If you overload the outlets, you blow the circuit breaker.

  • Goal is to avoid constantly overloading the circuits and tripping the breakers, so you need to know how many amps each lighting instrument draws:

  • Watts A· Volts = Amps

  • In standard U.S. households, volts are a constant: 120. That would mean that you need 1 amp for every 120 watts. A good rule of thumb is 1 amp for every 100 watts. Provides a little safety margin.

  • So a 15 amp circuit will not support two 1000 watt instruments!

  • A 1K lamp is 1000 watts, has nothing to do with Kelvin!