Daylight Savings Change Proposed

AveryRegier writes "CNN is reporting that Congress has added an amendment to the Energy Bill to extend daylight-savings time by two months. They expect to "save the equivalent of 10,000 barrels of oil a day." How long it would take for the associated energy savings to overcome the cost to make, test, and deploy the necessary code changes? How would the cost of this change compare with Y2K? Does most date routines' reliance on GMT make this just an issue of presenting the right time to the user?"

Comments

No problem

[waynegoode]

This would not be anything like Y2K. The code to change the time for Daylight Savings Time is already there. This is just a change in the data. Plus, it is generally only the OS that needs to be changed. The only real problem would be embedded electronics.

Living on the eastern edge of a time zone, I would love for DST to be extended.

I could be wrong...

[DaHat]

But isn't it "Daylight Saving Time" and not "Daylight Savings Time"? (ie no s)

I'll take the daylight

[vmcto]

I don't have the information necessary to make an observation regarding the net energy savings if any exists, but as a resident of Pennsylvania which runs from Lattitude 39 43' N to 42 N I would sure welcome the extra daylight.

I gotta say that driving to work in the dark and driving home from work in the dark is not a prticularly gratifying experience. In fact it's downright depressing.

Interestingly enough the times have been changed in the fairly recent past (according to the US Army:

During the "energy crisis" years, Congress enacted earlier starting dates for daylight time. In 1974, daylight time began on 6 January and in 1975 it began on 23 February. After those two years the starting date reverted back to the last Sunday in April. In 1986, a law was passed permanently shifting the starting date of daylight time to the first Sunday in April, beginning in 1987. The ending date of daylight time has not been subject to such changes, and has remained the last Sunday in October.

Re:Wrong Target

[Ironsides]

Err... Highest percentage of the problem is the military, not Social Security.... The military has a retirement program on top of just social security

Er, hate to say it but it's not Military either. Highest percentage is the "Department of Health and Human Services" (643.9 billion), followed by "Social Security Administration" (583.5 billion), "Department of Defense"+"Department of Veterans Services" (475.4+68.3=543.7 billion), "Department of the Treasury" (441.2 billion). Also, that military retirement program is just like any other pension plan people recieve. It also comes out of the "Department of Defense" budget.

Stop listening to the republican on your television please.

Stop listening to the democrat on yours.

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[Nos.]

A lot of people have responded to your post with a variety of reasons on why not to go to a permanent time. All my life I have lived in Saskatchewan (just north of Montana and North Dakota). We do not change times, and are one of the few places in North America that doesn't. Usually every spring there's talk about it and without fail, the government decides to just leave things alone.

Yes, this means that children to go to school when its dark. No, this typically does not mean that more are getting hit by cars. Farmers typically don't start work at a given time, they start with the dawn and finish when its to dark to see properly. The only reason they worry about the time is when they need parts to continue harvest/seeding/etc. Most parts places around here are starting to have extended hours during the seeding and harvest seasons.

It does cause a little confusion at times. Most of our TV channels will start an hour earlier/later. If you're doing business outside of the province you have to be aware of the local time.

Personally, I love the fact that regardless of the time of year, I can say that we are GMT -6. When a story gets posted that mentions an ecllipse or meteor shower, I can quickly determine the best viewing times from almost any summary.

Re:Creating a Boom?

[ackthpt]

Y2K drove the dot com bubble indirectly: the Fed loosened the money supply when it would ordinarily have been tightening, in order to give companies easy access to capital in case Y2K became a crisis. When Y2K passed uneventfully, the easy acces to capital became a different sort of crisis. IMO it was a risk worth taking, as the dot com bubble only destroyed my bank account, but Y2K seemed poised to destroy my ability to bank

The Fed did loosen the money supply, but they did also post 9/11, and it's still ultra inexpensive to borrow, but companies aren't because they lack faith that they'll be able to pay back loans based upon exected revenue forecasts (geez, I'm a geek, why do I know this stuff?, oh, right, I love econ :) anyway, fear of Y2K drove spending, because fear of being stranded was more compelling than fear they couldn't pay back any loans.

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[Wyatt Earp]

I personally think DST is idiotic and pointless.

Here is a...semi-serious piece on it

http://www.nationalreview.com/miller/miller2005040 10806.asp

"Congress passed the first DST law in 1918 and repealed it the next year. Franklin Delano Roosevelt imposed year-round DST for three years during the Second World War. In 1966, Congress approved a uniform DST standard for the whole country. In the 1970s, Richard Nixon had the nation go on DST for 15 consecutive months in order to conserve energy. The last president to modify DST was Ronald Reagan, who advanced DST's start date to the first Sunday in April."

"As Michael Downing points out in his new book, Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time, urban businessmen were a major force behind the adoption of DST in the United States. They thought daylight would encourage workers to go shopping on their way home. They also tried to make a case for agriculture, though they didn't bother to consult any actual farmers. One pamphlet argued that DST would benefit the men and women who worked the land because "most farm products are better when gathered with dew on. They are firmer, crisper, than if the sun has dried the dew off." At least that was the claim of the Boston Chamber of Commerce, chaired by department-store magnate A. Lincoln Filene."

"We're also informed that DST helps conserve energy, apparently because people arriving home when the sun is still up don't switch on their lights. Didn't it occur to anybody that maybe they compensate by switching them on earlier in the morning? Moreover, people who arrive home from work an hour earlier during the hot summer months are probably more prone to turning up their air conditioners. According to Downing, the petroleum industry once was "an ardent and generous supporter" of DST because it believed people would hop in their cars and drive for pleasure -- and guzzle more gas.

But the very worst thing about DST is that it's bad for your health. According to Stanley Coren, a sleep expert at the University of British Columbia, the number of traffic accidents and fatal industrial mishaps increase on the Monday after we spring forward. The reason, presumably, is because losing even a single hour of sleep over the weekend makes a lot of people a bit drowsier on what we might usefully call Black Monday. Unfortunately, there's no compensating effect of a super-safe Monday as we go off DST and "fall back" in the autumn."

http://www.mcmaster.ca/inabis98/occupational/coren 0164/two.html

Change Implications

[mugnyte]

Answering the original question, I work in the power industry as a developer. I can watch the local load curve and do a bit of my own research about supposed "energy savings" by artificially making the sun set later in the day. BoooOogus. The savings would be low.

You all know this: The devil is in the details. The programming impact would be larger than anticipated. Power is usually tracking in "hour ending" and various participants use a 23 and 25-hour day when necessary, defined as "relative hour of the day". Because of this, date conversions abound and the the "first sunday in april/last sunday in october" algorithm is in quite a few places. The impact would be high.

I think it's political hot air. Why not just ask people to pay more for oil? The markets know how to react.

Re:Creating a Boom?

[el-spectre]

I wish I had a link, but I recall that the DoD did an experiment for y2k. They used the software fix as an opportunity to replace some only mainframes with newer hardware and software. Then they let these 3 old machines run through the end of the year, unpatched.

Yup, all 3 failed within seconds.

Re:Why not go to DST permanently?

[slackerboy]

Farmers hold a decent bit of lobbying power, moreso than one would expect by chance. They complain about DST one way or another. Most farmers like DST so they don't need to get up so early in order to get chores done. My grandfather didn't really care; he just got up when it was light out, regardless of time.

Indiana still doesn't do DST (due to the farm lobby), but, IIRC, they're trying to work it through their legislature. Whenever I go to my mom's in the summer I always laugh at them because the sun rises around 5 a.m. in June / July.

According to Wikipedia, most farmers actually hate DST (as others have mentioned). And the reason that Indiana doesn't do the whole DST thing has more to do with the fact that the state is divided between time zones as it is.

But hey, if you want to blame the guys that grow the food you eat, go ahead.

Re:I'm still tired and coffee'd up to my eyeballs!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, well, I don't really think he expected anyone to take him seriously, just laugh at the French. This is what he actually said.

Re:how about just....

[tegjr]

quoted from: http://www.anr.state.vt.us/reflect/may1401.htm "Your dad or grandpa probably taught you that you'd save electricity, or at least save money, by leaving fluorescent lights on for extended periods of time rather than turning them off and then back on. That may have been true once, but not any more. The following, borrowed from Kansas City Power and Light, answers the question: Should I turn off fluorescent lights when I don't need them, or is it more energy-efficient to leave them on in an empty room? Fluorescent lighting was developed in the 1940s when electricity costs were low. Design and manufacturing compromises in these early lamps caused them to burn out more quickly if switched on and off daily. Consequently, many companies left their fluorescent lamps on day and night. The electricity consumed -- given the extremely low power rates at that time -- actually cost less than the labor and material needed for lamp replacement. Much has changed during the past half century in the world of lighting. Technology advancements and increased electricity cost have prompted the lighting industry to rethink the conventional wisdom of fluorescent lighting system's operation. Many people continue to believe that it takes significantly more electricity to turn on a fluorescent lamp than to operate the lamp for long periods. Modern fluorescent lamps, however, use little starting energy. Turning them off actually helps them last longer and lowers lighting energy costs. Researchers at the U.S. Naval Civil Engineering Laboratory have found that a fluorescent lamp's initial "start surge" lasts only 1/120 of a second. The entire starting current for two-tube rapid-start luminaries lasts less than one second before it stabilizes. Consequently, Navy engineers assert that turning the lamps off for only one second saves the energy required to turn them back on. A standard fluorescent lamp can run for 34,000 hours if left on 24 hours a day, 365 days per year. This equals 3.9 years of round-the-clock use. However, by turning the lamp off for 12 hours a day, it increases the overall longevity of the lamp to 6.8 years. Not only does turning off fluorescent lights reduce lamp replacement costs, it also reduces electric bills. For example turning off a single one-tube light for only one-half hour a day can save about $3 in energy over the life of the lamp. In fact, the money saved by this routine is typically more than the price of a new lamp. In short, you should turn off lights in your office or a room in your home when you leave, even if you leave for only a few minutes. For more detailed information and additional data about fluorescent light use, visit the Kansas City Power and Light website at http://lighting.bki.com/pubs/bull4.asp?link=kcpl Article posted for the week of May 14, 2001."

Re:Creating a Boom?

[LordPixie]

I wish I had a link,

I sense a need for my Mad Googling Skills. LordPixie, to the rescue !!

After wasting the last 15 minutes of my life. (OK. Fine. My employer's time/money.) I have determined that this little story is not apocryphal bullshit !

For example, see this little site. It not only covers the anecdote you mentioned, but also includes a link to a (now defunct) CNN article. Further references can be found by simply googling for Koskinen "three computers".

I would also like to take this opportunity to point out that LordPixie usually charges for the services of his Madcap Googling Skills. This time was free. =)


--LordPixie

A Better Idea

[TFGeditor]

Take a look at this http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap001127.html

Simply mandating that cities turn off every other street light after 2300 hours would save tens of thousands of barrels per day.