Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Thriftyverse t1_j56wo33 wrote

Reply to comment by AStartIsBorn in The Lights Have Been On At a Massachusetts School For Over a Year Because No One Can Turn Them Off by AStartIsBorn

It's a design flaw, sure, but for the design they did, it makes sense to default to 'always on'.

If default was 'always off' then there would be no way to turn the lights on at all. Which would mean lights out until a service tech could get out there.

Having it be 'always on' means you can still use the breakers to turn them off, so at least there is a way.

33

needabiggerhammer t1_j571uop wrote

Yeah, that is just a safety thing. Don't want the system going out and leaving everyone in the dark. Esp. if it went out because of an emergency.

17

Thriftyverse t1_j57e7db wrote

And it's good that they bothered with safety, because they didn't really think all of it through when they designed it.

5

OAMP47 t1_j588xro wrote

That suddenly triggered a decade and a half old memory from my time renting in college. Scheduled maintenance of the blocks' power grid. My apartment was accessible from an interior hallway on the second floor with no windows. Coming home from grocery shopping that was the day we all discovered the emergency lights in the building didn't work and it was pitch black trying to feel the way up the stairs and to anyone's unit door.

2

GoArray t1_j57czwn wrote

Spot on, one (shitty) caveat though. Had they defaulted to always off, the issue probably would have been addressed almost immediately.

Folks can live with too much electricity, shut it off and all hell breaks loose.

8

Thriftyverse t1_j57ehpa wrote

Yeah, at always off they would have fixed it, but probably not added a manual override. Just repaired and sent out the same way.

2