Power runs: generators, battery packs and distribution boxes

On an event site you can draw the power runs: the cables from each generator, battery pack and power distribution box to the equipment they feed. The plan then adds up the load on every source, through every distribution box below it, warns you when a source is overloaded, and offers cable protectors and vehicle ramps where a run crosses a path or a road. Power runs work on Residential and Retail sites too, for temporary works and site set-up, and they are drawn in 3D as a cable on the ground with its protectors and ramps.

Sources and distribution boxes

• Generator (Medical & safety) — its rating is its kVA parameter: 20, 60, 100, 200 or 500.
• Battery pack (Medical & safety) — an Output in kVA (5 to 100) and a Capacity in kWh (10 to 300), set from your hire sheet. The option lists and the defaults (20 kVA, 45 kWh) are ours, not a published range. Only the output is compared with the load; how long the stored energy lasts is not modelled. It has no rate on the hire card, so it is placed and scheduled but not priced, and the site-wide Generator capacity check still counts generators only.
• Power distribution box (Performance) — its Supply (16, 32, 63 or 125 A) and Phases (single or three). Its rating is arithmetic on that supply: kVA = 230 V × A ÷ 1000 single-phase, or √3 × 400 V × A ÷ 1000 three-phase (a 63 A three-phase box is 43.6 kVA). Its outgoing ways and protective devices are not modelled.

Drawing a run

1. Select a generator, battery pack or distribution box and press ⚡ Add power run on the selection bar (or right-click it, or use the button in its ⚙ Parameters).
2. Click to route the cable round whatever is in the way, then click the ride, stall, trader or distribution box it feeds. The run ends on that object — it is outlined green when it can be fed and red when it cannot — and from then on it follows the object when you move it. Backspace takes back the last point; Esc cancels. On the iPad, tap to add points and tap the equipment to finish.
3. Wiring a generator to a distribution box, and the box to the rides, builds a tree: the generator carries everything below the box.

A run cannot end on a generator or a battery pack, start from a ride, feed something that is already fed, or feed a box from its own output; the tool says which when you click.

Select a run by clicking it. Drag a point to move it, drag the line to add a point, Alt-click (a long press on the iPad) a point to remove it, and press Delete to delete the run. Every change is one undo step and reaches anyone working on the design with you. Deleting an object deletes the runs to and from it the next time a run is changed.

Protection

As soon as a run is placed you are asked how to protect it:

• At crossings only — suggested whenever the run crosses something drawn on the plan. A vehicle cable ramp where it crosses a road, shared drive, trackway or vehicle route (indicative), and a pedestrian cable protector where it crosses a footpath or a pathway. Each crossing covers the width of the way along the run plus 0.5 m either side — our margin, not a published one.
• Pedestrian cable protector or Vehicle cable ramp (heavy duty) along the whole run.
• No protection — buried, flown overhead or routed where nobody walks or drives; record how in the event plan.

Change it later with 🛡 Protection… on a selected run. Protected stretches are drawn as a band with hatching — cross ticks for a protector, chevrons for a ramp — and their lengths are on the run's caption. Check the product's own load rating with your supplier: the tool does not.

Loads

A ride or a stall draws its own kVA (a typical figure from the research, each ride's own manual governs). Other powered equipment has a typical figure that is ours, not a published one — a food unit or a bar 5 kVA, a stage 20, an LED screen 5 to 10, a shower block 10, a lighting tower 1.5, a cabin or a welfare tent 1 to 3, a market stall 1. Select an object and press ⚡ Load… (or Set load… in its parameters) to enter the figure on its plate; leave it blank to go back to the typical one. An object you set to 0 draws nothing.

The overload warning

Each source's load is the sum of every unit wired from it, through every distribution box below it, at each unit's own kVA at full load. No diversity factor is applied — no open UK source publishes one for an event, so any allowance for units not drawing peak together, and any spare-capacity headroom, would be ours. Starting surges are not modelled. When the load is more than the rating:

• the source shows a red ⚠ load / rating badge on the plan (even with the runs hidden);
• its ⚙ Parameters says OVERLOADED by … kVA;
• the checks report Power runs: load against each source's rating as a warning — never a failure, because both sides are sums, not a published requirement. A distribution box is judged against its own supply too. No attendance is needed for this check.

A unit with no kVA figure leaves its source uncompared (a partial sum would be a figure nobody measured). A powered unit with no run is only a note: a showman's ride or a trader often brings its own generator. Temporary distribution follows BS 7909:2023+A1:2024, which we cite by existence only — it is a paid standard we have not read.

The power schedule

🎪 Event ▸ ⚡ Power schedule… lists every generator, battery pack and distribution box with something wired from it: its rating, its connected load, the number of runs and the cable length from it, and the lengths of cable protector and vehicle ramp on those runs, with overloaded sources in red. Copy CSV copies the table. Cable lengths are measured on the plan from the edge of one object to the edge of the next; allow for the drop to each socket yourself.

On a sketch sheet: power and cable schedules, and a legend

Three tables go on a sketch sheet on an event site, from ✍ Annotation. They are derived from the design, so they change when you change a run, a load or a rating, and they use the same figures as the Power schedule window and the checks.

• Schedule… → Power schedule — one row for each generator, battery pack and distribution box with something wired from it: its ref (the object’s mark), name, type, rating, connected load, what is spare or over, and the number of cables out. An overloaded source reads OVERLOADED by … kVA and its row is printed bold, because a sheet is monochrome. The TOTAL row counts each supply once: a generator, a battery pack, or a box nothing feeds. A box fed from a generator is not added again, because its load is already in the generator’s.
• Schedule… → Cable schedule — one row per run: a ref (PC01, PC02… — P for power, so it never reads like a camping mark — in the order the runs were drawn, so deleting a run renumbers the ones after it), where it runs from and to, its length, the load it carries (everything downstream of it), and its protection (metres of pedestrian cable protector, metres of vehicle ramp, or none). The TOTAL row adds up the cable, protector and ramp metres. A run that feeds something already fed, or would close a loop, says not counted.
• Legend… → Power cables — a key to the power line types the design has: the cable, a stretch with a pedestrian protector, a stretch with a vehicle ramp, and the OVERLOADED mark when a source is over. Each is drawn in the sheet’s own Power / wiring colour and weight. If you hide Power / wiring on the sheet, or turn ⚡ Power off, the sheet draws no runs, so the legend keys none and its bar names what it left out. The other legends do the same. The overload mark is also left out when the sheet hides Annotation.

They behave like every other schedule: you can drag them, tick columns on and off, set the width and text size, split and join them, lock them, download a CSV (not for the legend), and undo any change. They are saved with each view and come out on issued sheets and in the DXF, with the schedules on the SCHEDULE layer and the legend on LEGEND. The figures are sums of each unit’s own kVA at full load with no diversity factor applied. Ride loads are typical figures from the research, and other loads are typical figures that are ours unless you entered your own. BS 7909 is cited by existence only.

On a Residential or Retail site

Power runs are not only for events. On a housing or retail scheme they lay out the temporary supply for the works and the site set-up: a generator feeding the welfare and office cabins, the lighting towers, the temporary traffic signals and the CCTV towers.

• Sources are the library's site Generator (60 kVA by default, a typical set: ours), a brand pack's generator, such as Sunbelt's 60 kVA JCB G66QS (63 kVA, as Sunbelt publishes it), and the Battery pack. The Battery pack and the Power distribution box are in Temp Works, the same objects an event site uses: 📹 Site set-up ▸ ⚡ Place power kit… opens the library there. A box is fed by a run and feeds others, so a generator can feed a box that feeds the cabins, and a box can feed another box.
• ⚡ Rating… on the selection bar (or right-click, or 📹 Site set-up ▸ ⚡ Power rating…) sets the figure the load is compared with: a generator's rating in kVA, a battery pack's output (kVA) and capacity (kWh), or a distribution box's supply (16, 32, 63 or 125 A, single- or three-phase, which the box turns into kVA). For a brand pack's generator the default stays the supplier's published rating; a rating you enter replaces it in this design and is shown as yours in the power schedule. Leave it blank (or press Defaults) to go back. One undo step each.
• Consumers carry a typical load that is ours, not a supplier's rating: a site or welfare cabin 5 kVA, a toilet unit 2, a shower unit 10, a lighting tower 1.5, a temporary traffic signal set 0.3, a CCTV tower or sentry 0.5. A brand pack's unit takes the figure of the object it is drawn as. Enter the figure on the unit's plate with ⚡ Load… on the selection bar.
• Select the generator, battery pack or distribution box and press ⚡ Add power run on the selection bar (or right-click it), then draw the run exactly as above. Protection works the same way: a ramp where a run crosses a road or a shared drive, a protector where it crosses a footpath.
• Show cable runs appears at the bottom of the plan once the design has a run. Power / wiring is in each sketch view's style settings, and the Power schedule, Cable schedule and Power cables legend can go on a sheet.
• 📹 Site set-up ▸ 📋 Power schedule… lists every source and box with something wired from it, as on an event site.
• The load on each generator, battery pack and distribution box against its rating is reported in the checks' design review as Power run load against the source: a warning when it is over, never a failure, and information when it is within the rating.
• In a DXF the runs are on their own layer, POWER.

A design with no power run is exactly as it was: nothing is added to its plan, sheets, checks, 3D or DXF.

In 3D

In the 3D view each run is a dark cable lying on the ground along its route, from the edge of one object to the edge of the other, following the ground it crosses: grass, a carriageway, a raised footway. Where a run is protected you see the kit itself, laid along the run through the protected stretch, so where a run crosses a road the ramp lies across that road the way a vehicle drives over it:

• a pedestrian cable protector is a low hump about 0.5 m wide and 60 mm high, black with a yellow lid;
• a vehicle cable ramp is a heavier yellow ramp about 0.9 m wide and 90 mm high, with a dark lid over the cable channels.

These sizes are ours, typical of the kit rather than any one product. The 3D view follows Show cable runs and each run's own visibility, exactly as the plan does: with the runs hidden, or a run's equipment not on site in the viewed phase, it is not drawn. The cables and ramps are not selectable in 3D; edit runs on the plan.

Showing and hiding

• Show cable runs, in the bottom-left corner of the plan, shows or hides the runs in every 2D view — this plan, every sketch view, issued sheets and the DXF. It is saved with the design.
• With it on, a sketch view can hide them on that view alone: Power / wiring in its style settings, with its own line colour and weight. On a sheet the loads print beside each source at a fixed size, with the Annotation row.
• In a DXF the runs and their protection are on their own layer: EVT_POWER on an event site, POWER on a Residential or Retail site.