USA. All the lights in the school have been on for a year and a half. Because no one can turn them off

Minnechaug Regional High School in Massachusetts was built in 2012. At that time, an intelligent, energy-saving lighting system was installed in it. It was supposed to automatically control the switching on and off of the lights, and thus reduce both the consumption and the cost of electricity. However, on August 24, 2021, the system crashed, resulting in default settings. The fault went unfixed for the next 17 months, and the lights stay on at all times by default.

– Teachers complain because they can’t dim the lights to show a presentation or a movie from a projector. They get around it by unscrewing light bulbs. The lights appear to be on all over the school grounds, one of the school’s students told NBC News. However, a faulty lighting system not only hinders the work of teachers, but also generates significant costs. “We are fully aware that this is costing taxpayers a significant amount of money, and we are doing everything we can to address the issue,” Aaron Osborne, an employee of the Hampden-Wilbraham School District’s finance unit, told NBC News. which includes Minnechaug Regional High School.

He added that due to the fact that in the recent pandemic years the demand for electricity – and thus its costs – fluctuated greatly, it is currently difficult to estimate how much this failure affects the amount of bills. But with energy-saving light bulbs at school, he says, it’s a matter of “thousands, not tens of thousands, of dollars a month.”

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Aaron Osborne points out that after the failure was discovered, the school immediately attempted to contact the supplier of the lighting system. It turned out, however, that since the installation of the system, the company responsible for its installation has changed owners several times. It took several more weeks to track down the current management of the enterprise.

After contacting those responsible for the school’s lighting system, the original plan to replace the entire lighting control system was rejected. It was considered that the cost of such an operation, estimated by the company at $ 1.2 million, would be too high. So the school decided to hire an independent consultant to investigate whether it was possible to change the default settings or install timers or switches. However, he said that was impossible.

So the school contacted the company that installed the system again. At that time, the company proposed a less expensive solution to the problem, consisting in replacing servers, lighting control consoles and other devices. The necessary parts were ordered in November 2021, and the repair itself is scheduled for February 2022. However, due to the broken supply chains caused by the pandemic, these estimates were overly optimistic, and the needed parts could not be brought down to USA.

Finally, in mid-January 2023, the company responsible for repairing the installation announced that it had received the necessary parts, which finally arrived from China. The repair of the lighting system at the school has been scheduled for the winter break, which will be in February. “And yes, we will install a remote master lighting switch so that this never happens again,” the owner of the company, which has been in the industry for more than 40 years, told NBC News.

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