Powering a film production is an expensive business. Your typical power set-up is a centralized grid, involving at least one or two 400A diesel generators. That number can rapidly rise to 20 on large, high-draw productions. This ‘overpowering’ of film sets has been the status quo for decades.

“Diesel generators have made us pretty lazy with our math – we basically just add up the lights we have and supply enough power to turn them all on at once, all day long, with lots left over for heating up all the snacks” – Kerri Coombs, Vancouver Gaffer.

A single generator emits a noise level of 73 decibels – louder than a standard vacuum cleaner – and 2.6 kg of CO₂per litre of diesel burned. As a result, they must be placed far enough from set to avoid being picked up by sound or damaging air quality and the health of the crew. This practice has a number of challenges.

Rigging crews spend days setting up hundreds of feet of three-phase seaway cable or 4/0 heavy gauge cable to transmit power to set, as well as mats to ensure traffic can pass over the cabling without damage. Due to the distances involved, this can lead to line loss and restricts set design to specific locations that allow access. Productions using generators must also procure costly permits and hire generator operators to bring in and monitor the units during shooting.

What’s more, even before the generator operators (a.k.a. Genny Ops) roll in the 400A generators to energize the grid, the pre-production crew often must use loud, noxious 6k and 2k gas generators for power until the diesel power grid is energized. All of this – the noise, the harmful fumes, the cabling and disruption – is in large part responsible for the growing friction between film crews and the residents of the world’s most famous film cities. This is leading to some neighbourhoods refusing permits for film crews to work there at all.