Testing Electrical Capacity of New Offices?

An anonymous reader asks: "Running a small graphic design studio, we've hit a snag that I'm sure many tech-reliant small businesses have hit before: our small flock of file servers, multi-processor machines and 22" monitors draws more electricity then the wiring in our current space can take. We're looking for a new space for this and other reasons, and as we look around we're generally forced to take the word of landlords as to what sort of amperage an electrical system can provide. Does anyone in the Slashdot community know a reliable way to test and see if an electrical system can support the needs of a computer-reliant business?"

Comments

Have you considered?

[krangomatik]

Bringing a qualified electrician along when looking for new office space. Or at least having an electrician give it a looking over before you sign a lease. They should be able to look at the power coming into the building as well as the current distribution system within the building and give you some idea as to whether or not it could meet your needs.

Total available amperage to your offices doesn't always do you a whole lot of good if you can't get the circuits you need to your server rooms. Be sure to discuss with the landlord any plans you may have to add or move existing circuits around.

Dummy loads

[Spamalamadingdong]

One way is to bring things which can pull as many watts (and preferably volt-amperes as well as watts - remember, computer gear does not have a unity power factor [look it up]) as your server stuff and plug it all in. Add a safety factor, say 20%; plug your dummy load in, turn it on, see if circuits stand up.

One good dummy load would be a bag full of travel-size hair dryers. They pull roughly 1500-1700 W apiece, and they don't take much room. You could plug a whole bunch of them in and see if you lose breakers; if you have 5 KW of server demand I'd go for about 7 KW of dummy loads for testing.

Note that this is over and above checking the ampere ratings on the breakers for the circuits in question. You don't necessarily know what's upstream, but like any other part of your production system you want to stress-test it before you rely on it.

Re:Check the breaker box

[Anonymous Coward]

A good rule of thumb is 70% of rated capacity here. For 30 amp breakers, assume that 21-22 amps is fine forever. Above that, *plan* to call an electrician to add another leg off of the transformer. *Budget* time and money for this.