New member needing help with commercial max demand

[Cliff88]

hi I’m new to this site. Need help with max demand and diversity of a large catering trailer. Thanks

 

[Dillb]

Alot more info is needed to give you any help. Like what loads will be connected?
How long will they all be used for?
For starters, then could you post up your thoughts so we can see if you understand what your trying to undertake.

 

[Cliff88]

Yes sorry thought this was just an introduction.

It’s a Caribbean catering van,
The items running off power are as followed
3x rice warmers totalling 5600w
2x Bain Marie 4000w
1x heat cabnight 1800w
1x drink fridge 500w
1x meat fridge 350w
This will be running off a generator sometimes and sometimes commando supply so we are limited to what it can pull!

 

[Dillb]

No lights, 13 amp sockets, water boiler, heater?

 

[Cliff88]

Lights are all led 90w
Girdle
Fryers
Boiler are gas
Small appliances like a till and a blender

 

[Richard Burns]

Welcome to the forum.

You have a heavy demand on that trailer for a standard electricity supply for a mobile unit, your maximum utilisation is about 60A.

Most mobile supplies tend to be 16A with a few 32A if you are lucky and you will need a fairly reasonable generator to provide that level of power.
I would suggest that the unit would need to be operated on a very conservative basis and due account taken of what is connected and switched on at any one time.
In practice the majority of operators assume infinite power at all times and take no consideration of possible overloads.
Because once in use the equipment will be going on and off on temperature, this does allow you some leeway but in general I would tend to try and arrange switching such that large demand items cannot be on simultaneously. Switching on would need to be staged to avoid a heavy overload initially.

Once all is in use then you should be able to operate on a 32A supply so long as due care is taken to limit heater use, e.g. rice warmers may not need to be on all the time once they are hot and could be switched off for a while if the lids are remaining in place at slow times or is it possible to use only one rice warmer depending on customer demand.
Running on a 16A supply would mean a limitation on what could be operated at once and so a cooking plan would need to be in place for these occasions.
Really you are trying to look at running only two or three of the high power kit at any one time.

 

[Cliff88]

Thank you for your reply, as aspected just wanted to confirm. Would you agree that putting the catering van on a 10k/ 12k generator would be best. Also having a 62a commando or 2x 32 a commandos for the supply input. Thanks