Canreef Aquatics Bulletin Board - How many watts can a normal household circuit handle?

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Originally Posted by DJ88

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Power (watts) = volts * amps so on a 125V system

Sorry but no it isn't. In a DC system that holds true. But due to the reactive nature of things like ballasts and pumps(as well as capacitances) in an AC circuit you can't use that formulae for AC circuit theory.

Yeah, you're right. From memory I thought that the VA was within about 10% of power in most cases, depending on the actual circuit design. I steered well clear of this stuff in university so from now on I'll stick with the 1400-1500W rule- once I'm ready to upgrade the lighting...

Thanks for all the input.

As a rough estimate I figure most tanks in the 75-120 gallon range with MH lighting probably consume about the same amount of power as each other on average. So the question is, for people with this size of tank, but not running anything else on the circuit (dedicated circuit for the tank only and not letting the wife run the vaccum cleaner on that circuit) is it causing the breaker to trip?