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SHOW SERVICES · BOOTH ELECTRICAL · POWER ORDERS
Electricity doesn’t come with your booth space — you order it by the outlet from the show’s electrical contractor, and the drops are laid on the concrete before your flooring goes down. Order late, or leave power off your floor plan, and the price jumps while your outlet lands in the wrong place. Here’s how it works — and how we get it right the first time.
THE SEQUENCE
Power is a sequence with hard deadlines, because the most important step happens before your booth even arrives:
You order power from the show’s electrical contractor — by outlet, sized in watts or amps (500W, 1000W, 2000W and up). The exhibitor manual publishes the order form and two rates: a cheaper advance rate with a deadline, and a floor rate for everyone who misses it.
Your order includes a scaled booth diagram marking exactly where each drop goes. This map is the only thing that decides where your power comes up — without one, the default is the back of the booth, whether that helps you or not.
Before flooring is laid, electricians run each drop across the concrete to your marked locations. Once carpet and padding go over them, the locations are fixed — moving a drop later means pulling up your floor at an hourly labor rate.
At move-in, the outlets are live at your marked points. In most cities your crew plugs in and goes; in union electrical jurisdictions, show electricians must make the connections — sometimes including cords, lighting hookups, and anything hardwired.
Ordered power runs for show days by default. If you need 24-hour power — for refrigeration, servers, or charging — that’s a separate line on the order form, not an assumption.
TEN-SECOND MATH
A typical inline-to-island setup — two machine demos, booth lighting, and a monitor wall — ordered at the advance rate:
EXAMPLE ORDER · ADVANCE RATE
Example figures for illustration — every show’s electrical contractor publishes its own rate card in the exhibitor manual, and the same order at the floor rate typically runs 25–50% higher. Union labor line applies only in union electrical jurisdictions.
WHERE BUDGETS GO SIDEWAYS
Electrical rarely goes wrong at the outlet — it goes wrong on the calendar and the floor plan:
Miss the advance deadline — often 2–3 weeks before move-in — and the identical order is billed at the floor rate. Same outlets, same drops, substantially more money, purely for ordering late.
Skip the power diagram and your drop defaults to the back of the booth. If your demo stations sit up front, you’re now paying hourly labor to re-run power — or taping extension cords across your own floor on show morning.
In cities like Chicago, connections beyond plugging into your ordered outlet must be made by show electricians — in some jurisdictions that extends to running cords and wiring booth lighting. It’s billed hourly, and it belongs in the budget, not the surprise column.
WHERE WE COME IN
We know your booth’s real electrical load before it ships — because we’ve already run it.
Every booth is fully assembled and powered up at our facility before shipping. We know the actual draw of your lighting, screens, and demos — so your order is sized to what the booth genuinely needs, not padded guesswork.
Your electrical order ships with a scaled floor plan marking every drop — placed to match the booth layout we built, so power comes up exactly where the demo stations and monitor walls sit.
The electrical advance deadline goes into your project schedule alongside the advance-warehouse dates, working backward from the show — so the cheaper rate is the rate you actually pay.
We flag union electrical cities in your quote, budget the connection labor honestly, and design booth wiring so show electricians can connect it fast — fewer billable hours on the clock.
STILL WONDERING
No. Booth space comes with four walls of air. Power is ordered separately from the show’s electrical contractor, by the outlet, at rates published in the exhibitor manual — and it is not part of any exhibit house’s booth contract, including ours.
Because the drops are laid on the concrete before your flooring goes down, and the diagram is the only instruction the electricians have. A scaled plan marking each drop location puts power exactly where your demos and screens need it. Without one, drops default to the back of the booth.
The same outlet at two prices. Order by the advance deadline — typically two to three weeks before move-in — and you pay the lower advance rate. Order after it, or on site, and the floor rate applies, commonly 25–50% higher.
In union electrical jurisdictions — Chicago being the best-known — connections beyond plugging into your ordered outlet must be made by show electricians, billed hourly. Depending on the jurisdiction, that can include running cords under carpet, connecting booth lighting, and any hardwired equipment. In most other cities, your own crew can plug in and go.
Add up what’s actually running: LED booth lighting is modest, large monitors and video walls draw more, and machine demos or kitchen equipment dominate. Because Pure Exhibits powers up every booth at pre-build, we order from the measured load — most 10×10s live comfortably on 500–1000W, while a 20×20 with demos typically orders 3,000–5,000W across several drops.
THE REST OF THE INVOICE
NO SURPRISE INVOICES
Your quote comes with the electrical order sized from your booth’s real load, the power map drawn, the advance deadline on the schedule, and union labor budgeted where it applies.
PREFER TO TALK? (800) 379-8451 · INFO@PUREXHIBITS.COM
