I’m going to finish up my last post, talking about power (eletrical, not authority!) issues to consider when planning your startup church. We’ve already looked at the two most important issues: distribution and grounding. Let’s just look at three more elements.

Failsafes
No matter how great your system, and how well you’ve planned it out, things can, and will, go wrong. So we can plan for things to fail gracefully.
#1: Inline Breakers. At some point you will overload a circuit, and trip a breaker. But you have the choice of WHOSE breaker you’re going to trip. It’s far better to buy inline 15amp breakers (~$30), and put one on each of your circuits, than to go hunting around for the facility’s fuse box when you trip a breaker during worship.
#2: UPS. When you DO trip a breaker, or experience a brown out or power outage, you can save thousand of dollars worth of equipment by simply having some battery backups on the important equipment. They also normally come with tens of thousands of dollars worth insurance on your equipment if it does get damaged. You also save yourself the reboot time on computers that lose power. Just make sure the UPS is rated with sufficient wattage for your equipment.
#3: Backup power cords and strips. One of the downsides to portable church is the wear and tear on equipment. A volunteer will help tear down, and might break a power strip, or put a dedicated power cord in the wrong box. It’s good to have a selection of 25′, 50′, and 100′ 10 gauge extension cords on hand. Also some decent power strips with surge protection, and some computer power cords. You don’t want to be making a WalMart run 15 minutes before service starts.

Equipment
When purchasing equipment, keep power consumption in mind. LED lighting doesn’t throw as well as old school lighting, but consumes a fraction of the power, and never gets hot to the touch. Dynamic, self-powered speakers help cut down on RF interferance, but have the added bonus of distributing the power load to each speaker, instead of having a rack of amps pulling a lot in one spot.
When purchasing power cords, you can buy regular extension cords from home depot, but make sure they are a thick enough guage that they won’t overheat under the load.
A far better solution is to purchase SO cord in bulk, and custom make your own cables. SO cord is heavy duty, proffesional grade electrical cord, available at Home Depot or a local electrician. It’s black, which makes it much easier to conceal than the bright yellow or red commercial extension cords. It’s rubber coated which helps stop it from getting kinked, and is easier to coil. And it’s designed for high power throughput.

Designing the system
First things first, map it out. Sketch out a layout of the facility, note where the stage, lights, soundboard, etc. will be, and figure out where you’re going to run power from, and how you’re going to route it. Remember to keep lighting power away from sound power.
Measure twice, cut once. If you’re going to make custom SO cords, give yourself plenty of slack when you cut and terminate. You’ll thank yourself later.
Protect your equipment. Whether you make or buy power cords, label everything. Use colored electrical tape to color code different power circuits. Consider using twist-lock plugs instead of the regular kind. Twist-locks will help prevent someone accidentally disconnecting a power cord. They will also prevent volunteers trying to unplug them from 6 feet away by yanking on the cord. It also stops them from being “borrowed” to use somewhere else, and never finding their way home again.
Storage. Portable churches; put the long cable runs on hose reels. Make sure volunteers tearing down know how to coil properly, and that the cords are not getting wrapped around someone’s elbow (more on that in a future post!).
Try asking the facility if you can have a dedicated breaker box professionally installed (on your dime). It really doesn’t take much cost or work, but that way you can be sure to have all the power you need without ever tripping the facility’s breakers.
Finally, find volunteers to help with this. Is there anyone with CAD skills who could help map out the facilities? Does someone have any experience as an electrician who could spend an evening wiring plugs and outlets? Can your local ACE hardware donate the SO cord for a tax write-off?

Phew! That’s a lot of information to process. Just remember to plan ahead. You may not be at a place right now that you need a big lighting rig, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be in a year or two.