are halides worst for blowing breakers?

[gerry45]

hi,

I live in an apartment and want to make sure the light I order won`t blow my breakers.
I have a coralife lunar aqualight 260 watt now which is fine and want to switch to maybe an aqualight pro , outer orbit or t5 tek light.

 

[dvanacker]

Hey....you posted this on AP.com as well huh??

Anyway........breakers are rated by AMPS. Usually the standard circuit is 15amps. This can be more then one recepticle but it depends ultimately how it was wired.

When trying to figure out if your lights will flip the breaker you have to take into account all electricity drawn from the breaker.

For simplicity sake say 1500watts is roughly 15amps. Add up everything you plan to run on that circuit and if its over 1500watts and its a standard 15amp breaker ....odds are you will trip it.

 

[beaniebeagle]

close

watts = volts multiplied by the amps

so 1500 watts divided by the volts (120) equals amps used = 12.5 amps

so hopefully your breakers are rated for 20 amps=> more equipment

 

[Ti]

I've tripped the breaker on TEK T5.
It all depends on the load on the circuit

 

[hahnmeister]

I think that the simplest response is 'yes'. compared to other lighting systems, halides can have huge surges when they first start, easily tripping a circuit if you have more than 500-750 watts of halide on the circuit (the actual wattage/amps depends not only on the ballast, but the bulb as well). But they can surge pretty bad.