Golf Simulator Room Electrical Plan: Where Every Outlet Goes Before the Frame Closes Up
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This guide explains how to plan electrical circuits for a golf simulator room before drywall goes up, covering NEC code requirements (e.g., dedicated 20-amp circuits for garage bays), power budgeting based on continuous-load derating (80% capacity), and actual wattage draws for projectors, gaming PCs, launch monitors, and accessories. The author walks through why planning early during framing is cost-effective and provides a load calculation methodology so readers can avoid undersized circuits or expensive retrofits.
Excerpt from GolfingSim - News
A 120-volt, 20-amp circuit gives you 2,400 watts on paper. You only get to plan around 1,920 of them. The National Electrical Code derates continuous loads, meaning anything running three hours or more, to 80 percent, which puts the real ceiling at 16 amps (Source: NFPA/NEC continuous-load derating, as explained on Mike Holt's Forum). A sim session blows past three hours constantly, so that 1,920-watt number is the budget your projector, PC, lighting, and heat all have to share.
Most golf simulator room electrical plans get written after the drywall is up, which is the expensive order to do it in. Run the power during framing, while the stud bays are still open and before the enclosure is standing, and the whole thing costs a fraction of the retrofit. Here is the plan.
Start with the one circuit the code already requires
If your bay is going in a garage, you do not get to decide whether a dedicated circuit is involved. NEC 210.11(C)(4) requires at least one 120-volt, 20-amp branch circuit to serve garage receptacle outlets, and that circuit "shall have no other outlets" (Source: National Electrical Code 210.11(C)(4), as summarized by EC&M and the NC Office of State Fire Marshal).
Read that twice. The code already hands you a dedicated 20-amp circuit in a garage. That is the anchor of your plan, not an upgrade you talk yourself into.
The outlet requirement is thinner than you would hope. NEC 210.52(G) asks for one receptacle per vehicle bay, mounted no higher than five and a half feet off the floor (Source: National Electrical Code 210.52(G)(1), via Leviton Captain Code). One low outlet. That is the legal minimum for a space you are about to fill with a projector, a PC, a launch monitor, a tablet, bay lighting, and a heater.
What the data says about your actual load
Numbers beat guesswork here, because the components that look small are small and the ones that look big are enormous.
The Epson LS800 4K laser projector pulls 350 watts in normal mode, 217 in eco, and 2 in standby (Source: Epson published specifications, EH-LS800 spec sheet). That is roughly three amps. Your ceiling-mounted projector is not the problem.
The PC is a different story. Golf-sim gaming builds spanning an RTX 3060 for 1080p up to an RTX 4080 with an i7 for 4K get specified with 750 to 1,000-watt power supplies (Source: PlayBetter Gaming PC for Golf Simulator Buying Guide, with standard PSU sizing). Pair a 1,000-watt-capable PC with that 350-watt projector and you have eaten…
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