Standard Electrical Formulas

Before investing in a generator, you must know how much power your business consumes. Calculating this information is a critical step in ensuring you get the right industrial generator to meet your needs. However, calculating your energy consumption isn’t the easiest. At Turnkey Industries, we understand this difficulty and will help you calculate your power consumption with our standard electrical formulas. These energy consumption calculators are easy to use and will help guarantee you get the proper generator that meets your unique energy needs.

Power in a system is measured in kilowatts (kW). You use this energy to power your home, and the more kilowatts of energy you use, the more energy is depleted. Most generator suppliers, including Turnkey Industries, label and categorize our generators by their power capabilities. A generator will have a standby number that indicates how much energy is consumed in a day with the generator powering appliances that are not in use. Generators will also have a prime number indicating the power the generator can supply in a typical eight-hour day. Before investing in a generator, you must find your power requirements and find a generator that can supply that power.

To find your power needs, you need to use a power consumption formula. After finding the kilowatts of power you’re using, you can further break the number down into energy over time. You can find your energy consumption on your monthly bills or use your own electricity consumption calculator and add up the power expenditures from each appliance. Some appliances list the amount of power they use, or you can find the amount online, whereas others will provide additional information, like the amperes, volts, and power factor.

If you don’t know the kilowatts off-hand, you can use a standard electrical formula to multiply amperes by volts by the power factor and divide by 1000. You would do this for a single-phase power supply, but if you have a three-phase, you must multiply everything by 1.73 before dividing by 1000. If your business is powered with a direct current (DC) instead of an alternating current (AC), you could drop the power factor and simply multiply amperes by volts before dividing by 1000. After finding the kilowatts needed, you can divide by 8 if you only use your equipment for eight hours a day or divide by 24 if you run your equipment continuously.