Pioneer Energy Products, LLC (Pepro, LLC) has a long history of designing and manufacturing custom enclosures that can protect telecom and other electronic equipment from everything from a lightning bolt to a raging forest fire. A leading manufacturer of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielded enclosure systems, Pepro caters to agencies and companies whose mission critical and remote communications needs demand equipment that performs in harsh environments.
Pepro can trace its origins to its sister company, Pioneer Electric Supply Company Inc., which was founded in 1973 in Franklin, PA by Vic Garmong. In 1992, Pioneer Electric Supply was approached by a natural gas company that needed an enclosure that would protect its telecom equipment in the field from lightning strikes, among other things. Since there was no product like that on the market, Pioneer Electric Supply set about designing and manufacturing the first shielded, secure enclosure.
Motorola became interested in Pepro’s enclosures, and that opened up a whole new market in public safety communications equipment. The two-way radio OEM wanted a cabinet that could be adapted to the needs of different agencies, which varied from one to four bays. Since then, public safety communications needs have grown. Recently, Pepro designed a deployable radio site for Williamson County, TN, that featured a 26-foot trailer, 60-foot tower with a 15-foot needle, a 12.5 kw diesel generator with a 90-gallon fuel tank, and four bay shielded cabinets with Faraday cage enclosures.
From there, Pepro moved into mobile units with towers and then into remote sites for federal agencies like the U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management, along with the Department of Defense and a number of public safety agencies.
Today, Pepro is still a family-owned business. It is run by Vic’s daughter and son, Kelly Lander, President; and Kevin Garmong, Vice President. They continue Pioneer’s tradition of engineering products based on their customers’ needs.
Pepro offers a selection of standard Shielded Enclosure Systems, Integrated Fixed Radio Sites, and Mobile Cell Towers. But its customers in the telecom, government, utility and transportation, military, and oil and gas industries seldom have “standard” needs.
“We have some standard products on our website, but the majority of the products that we manufacture are driven by the particular needs of each customer,” Lander said. “We do whatever we can to make the customer happy and to meet those needs.”
Pepro can customize its enclosures and remote towers in many ways. Most requests have to do with the size of the structure, the number of bays, equipment racks and battery trays. For mobile towers, they customize the size of the trailer, the type of axles and wheels (such as ruggedized for military and off-road applications), height of the tower and capacity, the size of generator and fuel tank, the power and electrical layout, and the amount of HVAC (depending on the amount of equipment and heat load).
“There are a lot of equipment options to meet our customers’ unique communications needs, which dictates the solution that we will engineer for them,” Lander said. “They will want to provide service to the greatest number of people. They will want redundant systems. They’re trying to get the most bang for their buck, and we want to help them do that.”
The Differentiator
Pepro LLC specializes in constructing mobile and permanent shielded cabinet and shelter systems to be deployed in extreme environments: harsh weather, militarized zones, railroads, deserts, forests, mountains, or mines.
“Our extreme environment shielded enclosures are engineered to withstand harsh weather such as high or low temperatures, corrosive humidity, or excessive dust and dirt,” Lander said. “Such applications require specially designed wireless communications. Our shielded cabinet and shelter product line are secure and reliable and ready to deploy.”
Pepro’s products also undergo independent testing to ensure that the shielding is effective for lightning, and the radiofrequency and electromagnetic frequencies.
Lightning Technologies, Inc. of Pittsfield, MA performed a direct lightning test that put 1 million volts and 80,000 amps directly onto the enclosure with only 10 microjoules, penetrating the enclosure’s interior. Shielding effectiveness for the enclosure of 70 db from frequencies of 20 megahertz to 3.29 gigahertz was rated by National Technical Systems of Boxborough, MA. Shielding effectiveness testing for the Pepro CLP Micro Site was done in accordance with MIL-STD-188-125-1 by Keystone Compliance of New Castle, PA.
Additionally, Pepro’s remote sites are environmentally friendly and can be installed or removed in a day and leave little to no footprint. Remote sites include a 20-year warranty when installed by its installation team, or by a certified installer.
Pepro’s Faraday cage technology is patented, as well as its tower designs, along with components that protect every penetration of the enclosure, including the door, ventilation, and power cable. Each penetration point must be treated with some type of shielding.
Conclusion
There are many examples where Mother Nature has destroyed the antennas on a tower but all the equipment inside a Pepro enclosure was left unharmed. Three years ago, a Pepro road crew installed a building on a mountain in Washington state and within a week a forest fire roared over the tower site, burning the antennas and cabling on the cell site, but the equipment in the Pepro enclosure was unscathed.
Another enclosure installed for the U.S. Forest Service on a mountain in Montana was struck by lightning. All the antennas on the tower were destroyed and it even blew up a boulder right next to the building. But none of the equipment inside the building was damaged.
Pepro’s state of the art technologies — shielded cabinets, Cell-on Wheels, and Walk-in Shelters — are simply built to survive.
For more information, visit www.peprollc.com or call (814) 676-5688.
By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor
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