While most of the time, upgrades to older buildings are essential, especially when they are intended to save money and energy. An upgrade to a lighting system at a Massachusetts high school has caused the building to be lit up around the clock because the district can’t figure out how to turn off the lights.
In August 2021, a new lighting system was installed at Minnechaug Regional High School to upgrade the system that was built over a decade ago. While the change was meant to save the district money by being more energy efficient, it has been anything but.
Ever since the software that runs the system failed, the lights in the Springfield suburbs school have been on continuously, costing taxpayers a small fortune. For nearly a year and a half, the high school has been lit up because the district can’t turn off the roughly 7,000 lights in the sprawling building.
“We are very much aware this is costing taxpayers a significant amount of money,” Aaron Osborne, the assistant superintendent of finance at the Hampden-Wilbraham Regional School District, said. “And we have been doing everything we can to get this problem solved.”
Osborne said it’s hard to say exactly how much money the lights are costing because during the pandemic and in its aftermath, energy costs have fluctuated wildly. “I would say the net impact is in the thousands of dollars per month on average but not in the tens of thousands,” Osborne said.
Luckily, that is in part because the high school decided to opt for highly efficient fluorescent and LED bulbs. To help cut down on the length of time the lights are on, teachers have begun manually removing bulbs from fixtures in classrooms and other staffers have shut off breakers not connected to the main system to douse some of the exterior lights.
Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/lights-massachusetts-school-year-no-one-can-turn-rcna65611