Haha....yeah I think those big searchlights just caught on big time last year over here. The local astronomers are complaining though! :D
I mean i am aware of advertising searchlights being used here for quite long as I do photography and they do use them for product launches/opening of pubs indoors and outdoors etc...but just not very big ones as in maybe a couplle of 2-3kW rented from the event company that's about it. What they are limited by is not the $$ or size, but rather the electrical feed, ie 240V 20A. This affects the sound as well, either that or you get a lot of 13-20A circuits and extensions.
The 1.2kW "small moving head" disco type ones are popular because they do pack a punch and are very versatile to deploy in all sorts of jobs, hey no sweat just plug 2 to a 240 13A socket here in a regular hotel ballroom, lay your control cables and you are ready to Rock n Roll. Just that it is like a fat 10 deg beamwidth, similar to what you get from a XM-L with a 40mm reflector, hence a 1kW XM-L. LOL! Definitely not to the scale that you see at Las Vegas. I hope it is not insensitive for me to say, but the 9/11 "Tribute in Light" is impressive as well. That 2011 National Parade was probably the biggest searchlight show that was ever put up here. They had to use a whole farm of gensets to power them, no joke.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU_qK-XvTwQ&feature=related (yeah I know, the hotspot is huge, so lux is not there, but the ones i have seen last week is setup to add up to be much tighter and brighter hotspot)
OT and you probably have seen it on youtube, but for the benefit of others.... Carbon arc searchlights http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qDc1MIKnMo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zqLAin9HHs&feature=related
We will never get them here, because trailers are not exactly allowed here on the roads, i mean not for ordinary citizens.
Each 60" Carbon Arc is probably 2 billion CP max if i remember correctly, and of about 12kW. Those Made-in-China big ones can go up to 10kW from what I see on alibaba (they claim 15kW though), but you can never be sure of the mirro reflector/ballast/bulb specs, read cheap ass MIC bulbs vs expensive GE/Philips/Ushio bulbs. But anyway the biggest here on Francis searchlights it is Polaris/Stardrift/Moonraker http://www.francis.co.uk/_includes/docs/pdf/datasheets/__polaris-moonraker.pdf
7kW, 1.5 deg, 10 lux at 10km. 28" aperture and 25" mirror. So that means 1 billion CP. Exact cumulation is very difficult of course, this is not an exact science setup like those 600 concave mirrors trying to melt 1kg of steel in 1 second hotter-than-the-sun stuff you see on Discovery channel. LOL! I think about 50pcs of those 5-10kW individual lights, maybe not as big and bad ass and high performing / collimated as the Francis biggest ones, but still easily packs a bigger punch than a single carbon arc. Of course it is an absolutely unfair comparison, 50 vs 1 and extremely large-scale commercial vs personal hobby, and nobody is preventing one from getting 2 or 3 carbon arcs. LOL! But I think it has never been done before now, though during WWII it'd have been a usual sight! (ie WOW!)
The good thing about Carbon arcs vs the regular HIDs that we come across is - carbon arc lives! The sound and jumping arc.
Interesting experience on your mainframe/DC and UPS infra. Yeah I have been to the genset room and battery room before, but just as a guest as I am not directly in charge of operations. 10,000 SLAs is WOW, hehe.... I actually tried to count and gave up, just a rough estimated I guess they have about 150 to 200 x 2V cells on each rack and about 12 racks. They do that for both IT as well as telephone switches, as I work in the biggest telco in this part of the world. They don't pay too well though, hey what is new? :D
They use bigger gen sets in the Air Force/Army though....
BTW, you met BVH/ShortArc, and those guys in CPF before? (or are you guys too far apart in USA)