Tax payers dollars ..they are in no rush to correct the problem.

…who? Who benefits from this?

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Minnechaug Class of '99 here. I went to school in the old building, which was built in 1954. Not relevant at all.

Too bad the article doesn't state what thee monthly electric bill was--because I am curious, although I can see how the figure could lead to the increasing chance of some asshat making death threats to a town councilor, or superintendent.

IOT strikes again.

>And fortunately for the district and the community, the solution might have just arrived in the form of a package from China.

Why do I suspect they just replaced one problem with another.

>“And yes, there will be a remote override switch so this won’t happen again,” Mustone added to the outlet.

Unless it has an open protocol and they hold the encryption keys and it's been audited that the whole thing doesn't tie back to a cert with looming expiration, that's an unwarranted belief.

Probably would have made more sense to have someone figure out a way into the system that was already deployed, rather than go around installing new boxes all over the school, only to find out that they don't have real control over those, either.

Fun!

The article is likely not stating it because the admins won't say:

>Osborne said it’s difficult to say how much money it's 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.

It wouldn't be difficult to figure it out, and "not tens of thousands oer months" isnt encouraging. The whole thing is due to the board mandating a fly-by-night green system where when something happens no other companies know what to do, but what I dont understand is why someone wasnt just flipping breakers at night. I can understand you can't flip the main, but surely there are breakers lol

MA infrastructure strikes again

Work in a school built by one of these companies. Same issue. Lights all over campus were on 24/7 and there was no switch to shut them off. Dances in the gym could only be done by me and another staff member finding the right circuit breaker and shutting it off.

Closets in the hallways had lights in them - with no switches - they were on all the time.

Can’t even change the bells without calling a company in another state.

Rumor is the light bill jumped from 10k per period (monthly/quarterly Im not sure) to over 40k.

They literally walked around the building and made sure we weren’t charging our personal phones or had plug in pencil sharpeners.

Crazy.

Did the school ever sue?

I don't understand what happened here? Why would you get rid of light switches if you're installing a system that conserves energy?

That's 9k a month for sure

This is what happens when you are forced to go with the lowest bidder, which I am assuming was the case.

Many new schools seem to have problems like this, unfortunately, whether it be leaky roofs, cracked floors, inadequate or faulty heating/cooling systems, etc.

Another factor is that vendors sell schools “the latest and greatest” and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of forethought by the community and administrators about how something is going to be maintained or supported over the long term, or what the cost of that maintenance and support will be.

I don’t think there is anything nefarious in all this. You have people with competing priorities trying to build something, so money doesn’t always get spent in the best way possible. Then other people inherit the problems and only have so much money to spend on fixing them.

You can’t have people flipping things on and off when an automated system is trying to manage everything. Most likely it uses room occupancy senors.

The tax payers are the ones in charge of determining how this money is spent.

A failure in specifications. If specified correctly, not a problem. Purchaser failed to imagine what could go wrong.

Viewing the district budget will tell you the planned electric expenditure.

A good case study for the old phrase that “just because you can add complexity doesn’t mean you should.”