Just stopped by the church today. They are thinking of adding some stage lighting and possibly changing out some of the house lighting. House lights are quantity of 5 MH 4-lamp pendant type. These cause interference in the sound system sometimes when kicked on. Also the existing stage lights are PAR 38 floods on dimmers. These dimmers are 10-20 feet away from sound board. They also cause inherence to the sound. Lighting and audio is fed from the same 3 phase 200 amp panel that is located 5 feet from the sound board.

Consultants came through and recommend a dimmer panel for control and for the future expansion of stage lighting. They say it needs a separate 200 amp feed. We would move the entire lighting load to this dimming panel that will be 25 feet away from the board. I am going to call them shortly to see what they have to say. But the questions that initially jumped through my mind are this:

Does interference travel through the wire or through the air (RF)?

If through the wire, how does a different feed correct this? Wouldn’t continuity through the buss at the service render this solution useless?

If through the air, shouldn’t we be considering moving the dimming panel further away?

My role is to figure what it is going to take to get 200 amps to this panel. I just want to make sure our solution is heading in the right direction. If our load is not exceeded, can I come off the existing 200 amp panel (that is assuming the new 200 amp feed is overkill, which I am guessing. We don’t want this place to look like a ballpark) or is that just asking for noise problems? I’ll post anything helpful the consultant has to say.