Shore power

Shore power is a term borrowed from boats, where it means plugging into the dock rather than running the engine. At an event it means the show is fed from the venue’s electrical service through a company switch or a dedicated temporary service, rather than from a generator.

When it is available it is the better answer by a distance. There is no fuel, no exhaust, no noise, no refuelling schedule, no spill plan and no generator sitting in a space somebody else wanted. There is also no engine running next to an audio system.

The reason it is a decision rather than a default is that venues have the power they were built for, not the power a production wants. A ballroom designed for lighting and air conditioning is not necessarily sized for a video wall, a lighting rig and a dozen motors on top of its own load, and the figure that matters is what is available at the connection point on the day, with whatever else is in the building running.

Outdoors the question is usually settled by distance. A park, a field or a closed street may have service somewhere, but the useful question is how far away it is, whether it is three phase, and what it is rated at — and the honest answer frequently makes a generator the simpler choice even where power technically exists.

Municipal event production — owned inventory, our own crew, and a site survey before anything is specified.

• Company switch The venue’s connection point for temporary power — a protected tap installed so a production can land feeder without touching the building’s panels.
• Generator (event) Portable power for a site that has none — specified by the load it will actually carry, sited for noise and exhaust, and hurt more by running too light than too heavy.
• Three-phase power The service nearly every event runs on — three live conductors and a neutral, giving 120 volts to neutral and 208 between phases, which is not 240 and not an arithmetic sum.