Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off • Hacker News Board

Re: Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off

#131

Post by NikolaNovak » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 4:36 PM UTC

gwd wrote: post #120

NikolaNovak wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't this used to be solved by the simple and incredibly efficient method of having a bathroom heater? One thing I don't understand about Nest et al is - virtually no houses have actual zone cooling or heating. So when we say "make bathroom 21c at 8pm" we are actually saying "heat up entire house until bathroom is 21c at 8pm". Turning on electric heater in bathroom for 30seconds seems incredibly more convenient and…

> Didn't this used to be solved by the simple and incredibly efficient method of having a bathroom heater? Bathroom heaters don't heat instantaneously; so you either have to remember to turn it on manually (introducing your own fudge factor, as described above), or start your bathing process with a colder-than-you-want room. > One thing I don't understand about Nest et al is - virtually no houses have actual zone coo…

Right; I was born in Europe and per-room heating was the norm; but I've lived in North America for last 30 years, and this is apparently still not something we have figured out - in Canada, vast majority of houses have central furnace with central fan. I've had several HVAC professionals come and despite my "Shut up and take my money!!!" attitude, basically none of them wanted to even bother giving me a quote to install something smarter and more granular (and why would they, when they can make good honest living doing routine work swapping furnace and AC control boards etc).

Re: Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off

#132

Post by themitigating » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 5:22 PM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #54

themitigating wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It costs millions to replace the entire system which may or may not be done since they are working on a fix. The system has 7000 bulbs and has been installed for 10 years. The energy savings already occurred and the inability to shut off the lights isn't a normal occurrence

7000x50 = 350000 for smart light bulbs. What are they paying the other 700k for?

Installation, fixtures, master controls.

I doubt they have 7000 bulbs on blutooth.

Re: Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off

#133

Post by wikfwikf » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 5:25 PM UTC

cube00 wrote: post #65

wikfwikf wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't flip a circuit breaker every night and every morning. Firstly the school's safety code would not allow it. Secondly they are not designed for that. Thirdly, there are probably lots of things in a high school which need to be kept on overnight: computers, fridges, lab equipment.

They are designed for that https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/21685/does-turning-c... But I agree some organizations will prohibit staff from touching the breakers.

Several answers on that page suggest that daily operation of circuit breakers is not harmless.

Re: Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off

#134

Post by jjk166 » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 6:12 PM UTC

They say they looked into having timers or switches installed but that it didn't prove feasible. I don't think they tried very hard.

There's still a physical wire running through the wall to the light. You put a manual dimmer switch downstream of the smart controller's output and it will just work like a regular dimmer switch. Any electrician can do it. Even in the worst case scenario where they need to run some additional wiring to put the switch in an appropriate location, you're talking maybe $400 for a few hours of labor per room worst case scenario. More realistically with a bulk rate it's probably closer to $100 per room. I don't know how many rooms this building has, but it's probably in the dozens, certainly not thousands. Again, worst case scenario you don't need to add switches for every room, it's okay if some of the smaller rooms with fewer lights stay on, and work can be done progressively to keep costs down and minimize disruptions. I wouldn't call it cheap or quick, but it would definitely be much less than $1.2 Million and 2 years.

Re: Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off

#135

Post by washadjeffmad » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 6:14 PM UTC

gwd wrote: post #45

braingenious wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious, what is the big draw of controlling your thermostat in real time that is significantly better than just (for example) a timer? As an argument against connecting one’s thermostat to the internet, I’ll point to this article: https://www.businessinsider.com/texas-energy-companies-remot...

> I’m curious, what is the big draw of controlling your thermostat in real time that is significantly better than just (for example) a timer? I don't use a smart thermostat, but what's told to me is this. With a "timer" thermostat, you tell the system when to start heating ; but what you really want to tell the system is when you want it warm . For example, we regularly give my son a bath between 7 and 7:30, so I wan…

Because humans perceive temperature in terms of radiant heat, perceptual comfort is different from gauge temperature.

I'm not sure how, but our smart thermostat intuits this to adjust to our comfort, not just a temperature.

Because of our climate, it's also convenient to program our fans to run at certain intervals, control for a set point for humidity, or to base behaviors off of other sensors (air quality, etc). Conditioning air isn't just for maintaining a temperature, and most traditional thermostats, while not ineffective, are completely unable to account for these things.

Re: Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off

#136

Post by jjk166 » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 6:20 PM UTC

wikfwikf wrote: post #18

HPsquared wrote: post #7

Surely there is a circuit breaker somewhere.

You can't flip a circuit breaker every night and every morning. Firstly the school's safety code would not allow it. Secondly they are not designed for that. Thirdly, there are probably lots of things in a high school which need to be kept on overnight: computers, fridges, lab equipment.

Circuit breakers are designed to be flipped thousands of times. You can most certainly flip a circuit breaker every night and every morning for years. It's tripping a breaker that you don't want to do very often.

Re: Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off

#137

Post by jjk166 » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 6:24 PM UTC

chopin wrote: post #70

Aeolun wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you can turn off the lights with a normal switch every night and morning, I’m inclined to say you can do the same with an entire circuit.

Circuit breakers are not designed for many cycles.

For flipping a breaker they are rated for thousands of cycles.

It's only tripping the breaker that requires a replacement after a few cycles.

Re: Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off

#138

Post by gus_massa » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 6:32 PM UTC

jjk166 wrote: post #134

They say they looked into having timers or switches installed but that it didn't prove feasible. I don't think they tried very hard. There's still a physical wire running through the wall to the light. You put a manual dimmer switch downstream of the smart controller's output and it will just work like a regular dimmer switch. Any electrician can do it. Even in the worst case scenario where they need to run some addi…

The article says 1200 students. Let's put 25 students per room, so there are 48 rooms. Add some overhead like an additional 50% for special rooms (like music of physics lab, the principal office), and an additional 50% for corridors and other stuff. Ok, 100 rooms. At $400 per room you get $40000, let's round it to $50000.

They probably need a lot of red tape to approve all the modifications for a school, but I also guess they just don't want to drop the green-super-efficient-fancy-light-system.

Re: Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off

#139

Post by toast0 » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 6:59 PM UTC

xnorswap wrote: post #26

This is why it's so important to have public contracts drafted and reviewed by experts. The original contract should have provision in place that the system be maintained, that the school be notified in any change in parent company ownership, etc. It would then be much easier to compel the company to do the replacement and if necessary sue them to recover the $1.2m cost. The issue isn't just one of a technological so…

> The original contract should have provision in place that the system be maintained, that the school be notified in any change in parent company ownership, etc.

> It would then be much easier to compel the company to do the replacement and if necessary sue them to recover the $1.2m cost.

The way this usually works is the original company sells its useful assets and then goes bankrupt. Or goes bankrupt and sells its useful assets. You can't compel a company to stay in continuous operation, and if you pay for an established company to do the work, you'll get complaints about paying too much for the work, because they'll charge you more to cover for future things they're compelled to do because they actually plan to be around.

Re: Lights have been on at this school for a year because no one can turn them off

#140

Post by cameronh90 » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 7:00 PM UTC

derenge wrote: post #119

cameronh90 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every light in my house is Hue, and all rooms have those Hue dimmer switches mounted over the normal light switch. I absolutely love it. It's never been anything other than instantly responsive, works without the internet and I can turn all the house's lights off from my bed. Additionally, the utility rooms, hallways and bathroom lights are just fully automated so you never think about it. The regular switches are st…

Could you elaborate more on how the dimmer switch covers your normal light switch? From the product page it looks like the dimmer has a flat back. Did you remove the actual switch?

There are a few options on the market depending on where you are. The specific product I have seems to be out of manufacture now but the replacement is the Samotech Hue Switch cover SM200 V2. It fits over the top of your existing light switch and the wireless dimmer attaches magnetically. If you need to turn off the light completely you can pop the cover and access the switch underneath.

It is a little bit bulky due to the nature of it but that's not something that bothers me. If you're particular about your interior design, you may need to look elsewhere: there are also complete light switch replacement products that are thinner and look a bit sleeker, but I haven't felt the need to move to those.

Another thing I like about the Hue system is I had so much difficulty finding reliable combinations of non-smart dimmer switch and LED light. Despite spending a lot of money to get supposedly high quality LED compatible dimmers, one would break every few months and occasionally they seemed to cause my LED lamps to burn out or have other weird issues like not completely turning off. All dimmer switches I tried had a subtle buzzing at certain light levels too.

It's possible there is some combination of lights and dimmers that works great, but since switching to Hue, it's the first time in my life where my lighting system has required zero maintenance in over a year. Other than when a squirrel bit through my garden string lights...