Because of a software error, all the lights have been on at a school in the US state of Massachusetts for almost a year and a half and so far nobody has managed to switch off the 7000 lights. This emerges from a report by the US news channel NBC. It states that, among other things, a “green lighting system” was installed when the Minnechaug Regional High School was built in 2012. This automatically regulated the brightness of the LED lamps and fluorescent tubes in order to save energy – and money. The problems would have started in August 2021, when the lighting was no longer dimmed and instead operated constantly at maximum brightness. Trying to fix that turned into a real odyssey.
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No timely solution possible
The company responsible for the installation was contacted because the system had returned to its initial state and had been delivering maximum brightness without interruption ever since. In the meantime, however, the owner has changed several times and it took several weeks to find someone who was familiar with the installed system. After much back and forth, the school received a cost estimate of 1.2 million US dollars in 2021 for replacing the entire system from summer 2023. A software consultant was hired to examine a circumvention. However, all of this proved to be unsustainable, which is why they ended up going back to the responsible company.
They would then have offered a makeshift solution and suggested replacing servers, control systems and other hardware. The parts were ordered in November 2021 and the repairs should have started in February 2022. But nothing came of it because of the supply chain difficulties. The first parts did not arrive until March 2022, the rest should have come last October. But nothing came of it either, so the repairs that were last announced for the winter break were canceled on the last day of school. In the meantime they have arrived and the repairs are to be carried out in February.
It is not possible to say at school how much permanent lighting costs. It’s probably several thousand US dollars a month, “but not ten thousand,” quotes NBC News a manager from the school administration. As early as November 2021, a student explained in the school newspaperthat the problem goes beyond the constant lighting. For example, no videos and films could be shown in the classrooms because the blackboards could not be darkened enough for them. Some teachers unscrewed lamps for this. The school itself, according to NBC, has shut down some parts entirely to at least dim outdoor lighting.
(mho)