If I have 8 60-watt light bulbs on a circuit, do I need more than a 300-watt line to run them?

Question

In other words, does 300 watts mean each bulb could be 300 watts, or that's the total wattage?

Answer 1

a 300 watt line means that you can transport or use till 300 watt

As your  light bulb consumption is  480 watt a 300 watt line is not enough

Answer 2

Lines aren't usually measured in watts.

If you have 8 bulbs, rated at 60 watts each, connected in parallel to a 120V circuit, each bulb will draw 1/2 amp, for a total of 4 amps, or 480 watts.

If you connect them in series, each bulb has a resistance of 240 ohms (r = 120 v ^ 2 / 60 w ), for a total resistance of (8 * 240 =) 1920 ohms.  At 120V, a 1920 ohm load will draw (120 / 1920 = ) 0.0625 amps, for a total of 7.5 watts.

So yes, if your line only delivers 300 watts, you can connect the lights in series, but each will only use 0.9375 watts, and will barely light.

Your best bet given the 300 watt limitation, is to come up with a combination of series and parallel.

300W / 120V = 2.5 A.

You could run 5 bulbs in parallel, at full brightness.

You could make 4 parallel branches of 2 series bulbs each, for 2 A (240 W) total, and each bulb would be half as bright, giving off 30W each.

Answer 3

As I can't yet give thumbs up I will say: listen to David, he's got it right.

Answer 4

Your circuit needs to support 300 watts, because thats the total amount going through it.

amperage + voltage = wattage

Assuming were talking regular 110 volt AC household current, then your using 2.72 amps of power, most household circuits have 15 amp breakers, so you could technically run about 27 60 watt light bulbs off a single circuit.

amperage is more important voltage when it comes to wiring size, normal household wiring is smaller then wiring for a car amplifier, even though a car runs on a 12 volt system, its easy for an amplifier to pull 500-1000 watts, which is 40-80 amps.

Voltage = speed of the flow, Amperage = size of the flow

wattage = total mass of the flow.