Power Draw Audit.

A standard 10 amp wall socket on 230 volt mains can supply about 2,300 watts at full load, and a 15 amp circuit about 3,450 watts. In practice you should never load a circuit to its rated maximum, so plan on around 1,800 to 2,000 watts of usable draw per 10 amp circuit. Anything heavier should be split across more circuits or moved to a dedicated power distribution feed.

Divide the total wattage by your supply voltage. On Australian 230 volt single phase, watts divided by 230 gives you the current in amps, so a 4,600 watt rig draws roughly 20 amps. Always add up the wattage of every powered item first, because amps stack up fast once you include amplifiers, lighting, fog machines and catering gear on the same run.

Breakers and RCDs are designed to trip before a circuit overheats, and gear like amplifiers and moving lights pulls a brief inrush surge at switch-on that is much higher than its running draw. Leaving roughly 20 percent headroom keeps you below that trip point and stops nuisance trips mid-show. As a rule of thumb, aim to use only about 8 amps of a 10 amp circuit.

Once your total draw climbs past about 7 kilowatts, you have outgrown the handful of 10 amp wall circuits most venues offer and you are into three phase or distribution territory. At that point you bring in a three phase distro, a tie-in to the building supply or a generator sized with headroom above your peak load. A licensed electrician or your AV supplier should specify and connect any three phase or generator feed.

Total your draw, divide by the usable capacity of one circuit, and that tells you the minimum number of separate circuits you need. The key is to balance the load evenly rather than chaining everything off one wall socket, and to keep heavy items like amplifiers and lighting dimmers on different breakers. If you cannot identify which sockets are on separate circuits, treat it as a job for a licensed electrician or hire proper power distribution.