Power Outages To Improve Future Quality of Life
Lance Cpl. Aaron Hostutler
okinawa marine staff

CAMP FOSTER
Service members and their families will continue to periodically experience scheduled power outages in the future. However, according to leaders at Facilities Maintenance Branch here, these power outages are planned in order to provide more reliable power and a better quality of life in the future.

The recent scheduled outages, although an inconvenience, are a result of a new hospital being built on Camp Foster directly behind where the temporary dental and medical clinic is located.

A building the size of the new hospital and all the equipment it uses will require a lot of power to operate, according to Joaquin Lujan, the electronic trades general foreman with the maintenance and repair section of the Facilities Maintenance Branch of Marine Corps Bases Japan.

Currently, all of the electricity comes directly from an Okinawa Electric Power Company substation. But, that substation alone is unable to provide enough power to support the hospital, so a new substation is being built behind Kubasaki High School on Camp Foster.

The new substation will be capable of supporting seven feeders, or main lines of power. Each feeder has a rating of 600 amps at 13,800 volts of electricity. The hospital is such a big project, it requires two feeders dedicated to it.

A project of this size requires building new manholes, laying new cable and even building a utilities bridge to bring the power where it needs to be. To do all of this safely, scheduled power outages must be conducted to ensure the safety of the workers.

“Originally Okinawa Electric Power Company wanted a three to five day consecutive power outage,” Lujan said. “We told them that was unacceptable.”

To fix the problem, the contractors from OEPC and foreman from maintenance and repair sat down and discussed the best way to go about the project.

“We don’t leave the table until all parties agree on the best way to conduct the power outage with minimum impact on Marine Corps Bases Japan,” Lujan said.
 
While ensuring that MCBJ gets the electricity they need is Lujan’s mission, he also strives to make sure there is minimum impact on the people and mission.

“We do whatever we can to minimize the impact on quality of life for Marines and their families as well as the impact on the mission,” Lujan said.

Even after the hospital is built, power outages will periodically be required to address growing demand and future improvements to the power distribution system.

“There never used to be computers in peoples homes, now there’s one in everyone’s home,” Lujan said. “Everyone had one (television), now there’s one in every room. As people upgrade, we have to upgrade as well.”

When is the next power outage on Camp Foster? Also, do you have a power outage schedule for the next few months?

I have the same question as brown1. The 16th of October is my daugther's first birthday party and I need to know if I am going to need to look into renting a banquet room somewhere else if we have no power. Also it would be nice to know the next few months since I am getting ready to deliver our second child around the end of November. Thank you very much.