By Dylan Pichnarcik News Editor On Monday, Sept. 30, Larned Hall experienced a power outage due to the generator powering the building being too large, according to Robert Totino, vice president of finance, technology and administration. Larned has been running on generated power since Saturday, Sept. 21 after a switchgear failed, causing a power outage on upper campus. [Editor’s Note: For more information, see “Equipment failure results in Saturday “power outage” in the Sept. 27 issue of The Gatepost.] The Sept. 30 outage was caused by the generator in Larned shutting off. Dan Giard, director of facilities, said, “They said the generator was too big, and to make everything emission friendly, if it's too big, it's not idling high enough, so it carbons up and then shuts off.” According to Giard, Larned lost power at 10:30 p.m. and power was restored at 1:00 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 1. There was no FSU Alert or official statement from any University official during the power outage. On Tuesday, Oct. 1, a planned power shutdown occurred in order to replace the generator in Larned with a smaller unit, according to Giard. The Office of Facilities and Capital Planning contracted with ABB - ESSCO to repair the switchgear in Larned Hall on Sept. 27. ABB was unable to fix the switchgear, Giard said. The switchgear was partially rebuilt and tested to determine if the repair worked. “The test equipment arched so they knew what they were doing was not working,” Giard said. According to Totino, the timeline for the final repair to the Larned switchgear has not been determined. He said many parties, including “ABB, internal Framingham State employees, and other groups, [are] looking for that potential new switch[gear]. “As soon as we know, we will work aggressively with Eversource, which will have to be brought back in, and other groups will have to be brought back in to move the correction forward.” Notification from the University first came from Christopher Addario, residence director of Larned Hall, on Tuesday, Oct. 1 at 10:39 a.m., according to Meg Nowak Boreggo, vice president of student affairs and dean of students. “Last night, the power went out due to an issue with the generator that has been powering Larned Hall,” Addario said in an email. “It has been decided that the generator will be swapped out today for a new one. This swap will take around 30 minutes and will occur between 12:30 p.m. and 1:30 p.m. today,” the email stated.
According to Giard, the power was shut down for approximately ten minutes on Tuesday when the generator was replaced.
Finley Hogan, a freshman Larned resident, said she was surprised that Larned was still running on a generator.
“They already said they were going to [complete repairs] and it didn’t work. They said we were going to be back on normal supply but that obviously didn’t happen,” she said.
At the time of the outage, Hogan was in her room and “immediately started sweating because my room is so hot and my fans turned off, so I went and sat on my friend’s floor because they have a cooler room on the opposite side of the dorm.”
Rowan Whittaker, a freshman Larned resident, said she was “taken off guard” by the power outage.
She said she was sitting in her room at the time of the outage. “Everything went black and people started screaming and running around in the hallways.”
Whittaker said she did “not feel good” knowing Larned was still running on generated power. “I would say if they could finally [finish the repairs], that would be great.”
She added, "Maybe a notification up front so we can plan our schedules around that because you need power to do a lot of things.”
Alyssa MacDougall, a junior Larned resident, was doing homework at the time of the outage. She said a lot of people were upset by the outage.
She added, “People were doing homework in the hallways in front of the emergency lights.”
MacDougall said she is concerned because “the WiFi in the building also shuts down when the power does. So even if you had your devices charged, you don’t have any WiFi and it’s kind of annoying.
“Especially if it's later in the night for you to leave your dorm and go to a different building like McCarthy.”
Ava Murray, a freshman resident of Larned, said, “I had a friend come up from Florida because she had to evacuate her school. But then the power went out so she had to sleep on the floor due to us not being able to blow up her air mattress.”
[Editor’s Note: Staff Writer Taylor Kimmell contributed to this article.]