The 1996 Military Housing Privatization Initiative (MHPI) opened the door to private-sector partnerships with the U.S. Department of Defense to supply high-quality military housing, quicker and at lower cost than government construction would allow. In late 2006, the Department of the Navy awarded one of the largest contracts to date for a multi-year housing renewal program on the 125,000-acre Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in Southern California. A multi-phase military housing development, the Camp Pendleton project will see the construction of 1,035 new housing units, demolition of 640 units and renovation of 2,171 units over an expected 48-month period.
The government contract included an advanced submetering system, which was installed by San Diego-based Hondo Electric, a large-scale commercial and residential electrical contracting firm. “Our supplier on this project was Consolidated Electrical Distributors,” said Steve Shoop, Hondo's president and a 25-year industry veteran. “And when I asked our contact Scott Jenkins about remote metering, he suggested E-Mon D-Mon.”
The tightly coordinated team effort involving contractor, distributor, local company rep and manufacturer was responsible for what the contractor himself termed “a very smooth install, free of unusual problems.”
Shoop recalls the initial challenge Hondo faced in retrofitting electrical metering into 600-plus housing units, stating that the E-Mon D-Mon submeters “provided for a simple solution to a complex problem.” The homes in question were all built without electrical meters, and the service entrance to each was routed directly to a load center inside the house. “This made measuring energy usage a major change that conventionally would have required installing a new service entrance to the outside of each home, with a meter/main and running a sub-feed through the house to the existing load center,” he said. “As a result, there would have been considerable drywall and stucco damage.”
The entire retrofit project was completed by two Hondo electricians in only six months. Electrician Jeremiah Fimeah said, “The installation at Camp Pendleton went without a hitch and the product performed perfectly 100% of the time.” Fimeah went on to say that “the split-core current sensors sped up the process and allowed the installation to be completed without power interruption. The NEMA 4 housings were quick and easy to mount, and the developer was very pleased with the end product.”