A camp is not one load. It is a set of loads that peak at different times of day: lighting and socket outlets in the accommodation; cooling or heating, which on hot and humid sites is usually the largest single block; the kitchen and canteen, whose demand lands in three short windows; water pumping and treatment, which runs whenever the tanks refill; laundry; offices and communications; external and perimeter lighting; and the workshop or plant that keeps the site itself running.
So the peak the plant has to carry is not the sum of everything installed. It is the sum of what runs at the same time — and shift change is normally when most of it happens at once.
The first decision is where the power comes from, and it is settled by distance and reliability rather than by preference. A public grid that is close and stable enough for the project schedule is normally the simplest way to run a camp. A grid that is distant, weak, or prone to outages that would stop the work turns the camp into an island that generates its own power.
Remote sites land on grid only, island generation only, or a hybrid where the camp's own generation carries the site and any available grid supplements it. The answer changes the entire distribution design, so it has to be fixed before the camp layout is frozen.
Fix the supply source before you fix the layout. Whether the camp is grid-fed or islanded decides where the plant sits, which cable routes you build, and what has to be duplicated.
Sizing starts from a load schedule: every load listed with its running demand, its starting demand and the hours it actually runs. Three adjustments turn that schedule into a required capacity. Diversity — not all loads run together, so the design peak is the simultaneous load, not the connected total. Motor starting — pumps, compressors and refrigeration draw a surge at start, and that surge, rather than the running load, often sizes the plant. Criticality and growth — the camp usually grows during the project, and a defined set of loads (water, medical, communications, lighting) has to stay live even when the rest is shed.
Over-building fails in the other direction: capacity nobody uses means fuel burnt at part load and a plant that is harder to service. Argue the number from the load schedule, not from a rule of thumb carried over from the last camp.
Four site effects move the power design, and all four are power-specific rather than general building questions. Cooling load: on hot and humid sites air conditioning becomes the dominant load, changing both the plant size and the supply to each accommodation unit. Altitude and ambient temperature: generator output falls as altitude rises and air gets hotter, so equipment rated at sea level may not deliver its nameplate figure on a highland or desert site. Dust, humidity and corrosion: enclosures, filters and cable supports take the climate directly, so enclosure rating and corrosion treatment are specified for the site. Exposure: open sites need surge and lightning protection designed in, and external lighting rated for the wind the site actually gets.
None of these are decisions about the building shell. They are the reason a camp power design cannot simply be copied from the previous project.
Solar pays back in a specific situation: a site where fuel is hard to deliver, expensive to move, or at risk of walking away. The value is not only the fuel bill — it is the logistics and the security of supply behind it.
The realistic configuration on a remote camp is hybrid: solar for the daytime load, a battery for the evening peak and the first part of the night, a generator for the remainder and standby. How much of the total the sun can take depends on the load profile against the local solar resource, so it is calculated per site rather than selected from a table.
The equipment is housed the way everything else in a modular camp is housed. Wanbang's own range includes a prefabricated container solar house built on the same container platform. Whether solar, battery or a larger generator is right is an engineering decision for the site; the platform only decides how the equipment is housed.
A camp normally runs on a utility spine: one primary route carrying power, water and drainage along the site, with sub-mains branching to zones and every block fed from a distribution point inside its zone. One spine and few zones is what keeps the finished camp maintainable, which is why the utility layout is drawn once, with power, water and drainage on the same drawing.
Three details decide how easy the camp is to run: protection and isolation at each zone, so a single fault does not take the camp down; earthing and bonding designed as one system rather than building by building; and sub-metering by zone where consumption has to be allocated. Perimeter lighting normally sits on its own circuit, because it is the load you least want to lose.
Inside the unit, the boundary is a connection point: the internal wiring, lighting and socket outlets belong to the unit, while the supply, the protection and the network belong to the camp. Writing that boundary into the contract is what prevents site arguments later.
On container-based camp platforms the internal services are installed before the units ship, which moves fit-out off the site critical path. Three recorded projects show what that means in practice; the figures below are the numbers each project was delivered against.
| Project | What was pre-installed | Effect on the site |
|---|---|---|
| Steel plant camp, Lagos State, Nigeria — 360 units (340 quick-assembly + 20 flat-pack) | Water and electrical systems installed before the units left the factory | Water and electrical fit-out removed from the critical path; the camp could operate early to meet the plant's commissioning schedule |
| Nickel industrial park, Sulawesi, Indonesia — 2,000+ units, living base for 10,000 | Pre-integrated restroom, water and power supply | Thousands of units deployed in a single batch, assembled on site within 30 days |
| Nickel mining camp, Philippines — 500+ units for 1,000 personnel | Integrated water and electrical pipelines | A full settlement — dormitories, administration, canteen and sanitation — with no concrete foundation, which the project record links to a 40% reduction in construction time |
The pattern repeats across all three: the further the electrical and water fit-out moves into the factory, the less site labour the camp consumes and the earlier it is live. The same container range covers container houses for mining camps and disaster relief.
A camp power system has a boundary worth writing down before procurement starts. Building side: the unit, its internal wiring, lighting and socket outlets, and the connection point where the camp supply arrives. Camp side: the generation plant and its enclosure, fuel storage and bunding, the grid connection and the agreement that goes with it, the distribution network between blocks, camp-level earthing and protection, utility metering, spare parts, and compliance sign-off against the local wiring code.
Two of those are habitually under-planned. Fuel storage is a civil, fire and security problem as much as an electrical one, and at a remote site fuel is both a logistics constraint and a theft risk. The other is maintenance: a camp in a dusty or humid environment needs a service regime agreed at handover, not discovered in the first month of operation.
Fixed on the platform: a shared unit footprint of 6,055 mm × 2,990 mm × 2,896 mm, colour-steel rock wool sandwich panels with Class A fire-resistant cores, bolted assembly with no site welding, a service life of 10–15 years, seismic intensity grade 8, typhoon resistance grade 10, and a baked-enamel steel finish documented as fade-resistant for up to five years. Those are the same whether the unit holds a bed, an office or a switchboard.
Set per site: where the power comes from, how much capacity the camp needs, how it is distributed and protected, what the local authority requires, and how fuel and maintenance are handled. The unit gives the camp a standard building block with a defined electrical connection; it does not decide the power strategy.
It is set per site from a load schedule of the site's own equipment, with cooling, kitchen and water pumping usually driving the peak. There is no figure for "power per worker" that survives contact with a real project, which is why the load schedule comes before plant selection.
Sometimes, but it depends on the load profile against the local solar resource. Most remote camps run hybrid — solar and battery to cut fuel consumption and generator running hours, with the generator covering the night, the peak and the backup. The platform houses the equipment; the mix is an engineering decision for the site.
On the recorded projects they are. A 360-unit camp in Nigeria shipped with water and electrical systems pre-installed; a 2,000+ unit camp in Sulawesi had restroom, water and power pre-integrated; a 500+ unit camp in the Philippines used integrated water and electrical pipelines. That is what takes fit-out off the site critical path.
The camp units themselves need no concrete foundation — the Philippines camp was built without one, which the project record links to a 40% reduction in construction time. How and where generation and control equipment is housed is a per-project decision taken together with the power design, not a catalogue item.
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