GENERATORS AT FESTIVALS
(excerpts from posts)

1) Query: Does anyone have experience using a generator to supply electricity to a storytelling festival?
Do generators generate a lot of noise that interferes with the storytelling experience? Do they last for 6 or more hours?
How do they work, exactly?
Does one rent one for the day?
Any information you could provide would be most illuminating.
Sue B. 10/18/06
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Response: For many years the Bay Area Storytelling Festival, an outdoor festival, used two or more portable generators to run the sound equipment in the tents.

Yes, portable generators are noisy. What we ended up doing was this:
1) keeping the generators "behind" the tents. The tents had walls, which screened out sound from the park, so there was a plastic wall between the audience and the sound.
2) using very long extension cords (I'm guessing 250 feet or more) to distance the generators from the tents.
3) building sound baffles to cover the generators. Basically these were wooden boxes that we placed over the generators to muffle the sound. These worked really well, but we did discover that you have to custom make these. If you put a large box over a diesel or gas generator, it can't get any oxygen and won't run, or will run until it uses up the oxygen and then shut itself off. You have to build a box that allows air to flow in. Depending on the site set up of your Festival, you could use half a box and make a "sound shield" which would deflect noise away from the performance area.

We would fill the generators up with gasoline in the morning. Then, 20-25 minutes before each performance, we would pull the cord just like on a gasoline-powered lawn mower, and start it up, giving us enough time to make sure the power was on for each concert's sound check. I don't remember how long they were supposed to last, but our stage crew would shut them off after each one hour concert. Halfway through the day, we would refill the tanks, so that we would be sure the power would last. (Always have extra gasoline around).

The park hosting the Festival had access to one or more generators, but we also found we could rent them. (Look in the Yellow Pages under Equipment Rental). I seem to recall we used Honda made generators, which is known for quiet generators.

Before you rent one, you need to know how much power you'll need. Ask your sound and or lighting technicians how many watts each piece of equipment uses (it's written on every sound amplifier and speaker... can't remember how lighting power is marked). Add those up, and then get a bigger one (the Rental person should be able to help you with this)... because you don't want to run a gasoline generator at maximum power for more than 30 minutes, and also because if you need to run something not a sound system or lights, like something with a motor (I don't know, maybe a food vendor needs an on-site freezer?), there's a heavier start up power cost (so it might need 300w to run, but 900w to turn on).

You should not use a gasoline-powered generator indoors.

After ten years or so, the park manager got tired of lugging generators around each year for special events, and ended up upgrading the park's outdoor power supply and wiring.
Tim E. 10/18/06
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(created 10/19/06)