Control/Dimming Help with dimmer pack and electrical needs -- school theater

[ZooeyFX]

I am trying to begin the process of updating our school theater lighting setup as our needs have outgrown our equipment. Our theater setup is quite unique in that we convert a general meeting area into our stage for tech week and then return it to normal once the performances are done. There is an existing lighting grid about 15' above the area of our "stage" (an area approx 20' x 20') with 60 individual circuits running to a central "booth". These circuits all have Edison plugs which connect our fixtures (Altman 65Q fresnels and 360Q ellipsoidals) to our dimmer pack (EDI 24 Dimmex Multilink). The dimmer pack is fed by a Circuit-Lock connection with the specs: 100 Amp 120/208 VAC 30Y 20H.P. There are currently thirty-two fixtures in our inventory and I would like to have these (and potentially some more light/color - LEDs? since the room gets quite warm when the audience is full) on 1-to-1 circuits. I have been looking at ETC Smartpacks in both the touring format as well as fixed. What I need to know is how many 575watt fixtures can safely be run on the 100A we have currently available, and what recommendations there are for dimmer packs that would serve the needs of this setup.

I'm sure I have omitted important information to assess this situation...

Thanks for your help.

 

[JD]

The short answer is about 50 -60. The long answer is very long indeed! (based on 575 watt lamps)

However, just because the connector is 100 amps, that does not meant that the breaker feeding it is. If it is 100 amps and it is 3 phase, you have 300 amps available to you. (Minus the de-rating.)

As for the LED's, they do not get powered by the dimmer packs, so they do not take up dimmer channels, just control channels on the board. They also take only a fraction of the power.

 

[ZooeyFX]

Thanks JD. I will look further into the exact nature of the service power.