RE: Power consumption

Harry, and everyone else,

Almost every game I've ever seen says it draws 3A. When I wired up my
basement arcade "Joel's Penny Arcade" (my wife's name is Penny -- how
convenient!) I brought 20 amp service to clusters of three dual outlets. My
rule is, I can plug exactly two machines into each dual receptacle, but not
more. So, on my 20 amp line, I'll never draw more than 18 amps if I chose
to have all 6 machines powered up simultaneously. I was reasonably
comfortable with the 10% margin of safety on top of the margin that's
already built into the ratings for the wire. I put outlets every 4 feet of
wall space so that with the machines against the wall, I do not have to run
wires all over the place. It gives a very straight shot from the machine to
the wall. Yes, that's a lot of outlets to outfit the arcade, I used 15.
And given the geometry of the room, I'll never be able to violate my power
consumption rule. In all, I ran 120 amp service to the arcade, 100 amps for
the games, and 20 amps for the lighting. I think the only problem with this
approach was that all those outlets slowed me down when I was putting up the
wall board. You have to cut out holes for all the outlet boxes.

It was worth it though. The arcade has been complete since January, and
when I got to power up all my games at once for the first time ever, it was
cool.

Joel-

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Harry Collins [mailto:bp100a@hotmail.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2000 9:36 PM
> To: vectorlist@synthcom.com
> Subject: VECTOR: Power consumption
>
>
> to all:
>
> does anyone have some figures for how much current (or watts)
> a "typical"
> game machine consumes? Some typical and worst case values
> would be helpful.
> I'm trying to wire my basement arcade and need some idea as
> to how many
> machines I can hang on a 20 amp circuit.
>
> /harry
>
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Received on Wed Oct 11 09:19:55 2000