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Daylight Saving Change Saved No Power
Brett writes "Results from energy companies are coming in, and the word is that moving Daylight Saving Time forward three weeks had no measurable impact on power consumption. The attempt by the US Congress to make it look like they were doing something about the energy crisis has been exposed as the waste it is. But the new DST is probably here to stay — letting the bill expire would mean re-patching a lot of systems again next year. So much for saving energy."
Just two quick examples of the COST of the change, due to lost productivity - I live in the Eastern US, and someone in Ireland missed a conference call with us because everyone on both sides of the Atlantic thought that Ireland was always 5 hours ahead (for some reason, people found it impossible to fathom that this wasnt the case if we changes our clock and they didn't, but whatever). Example number two - a contractor in brazil was going to take down our servers at 5:00 EDST but actually took them down at 4:00 since they didnt know about the time change.
If I had mod points, I'd mod Informative!!
Seriously, this "useful" change was nothing but a waste of time, AND clocks. All those clocks/devices that automatically change according to the standardized time? Useless. Software patches? Quite impossible for most.
Looks like the waste management facilities will see a rise in borked electronics because of this - and that does precisely 0 for the environment, too.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
This was a widely supported idea beyond just the US - a number of countries followed suit in the idea
A number of countries followed suit out of necessity to stay synchronized with U.S. businesses, rather than because of any particular support for the idea.
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STANDARDTIME.COM SAYS: If we are saving energy let's go year round with Daylight Savings Time. If we are not saving energy let's drop Daylight Savings Time!
Enough of this daylight time, reset-the-clocks insanity. Just stop the madness.
That's six more weeks in the year when it will be light out when I (and a lot of the rest of you) go home from work.
On the flip side, however, it means that there's six more weeks in the year when it is still dark when we go to work... the other side of the coin.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Yes, but it will remain that way for largely practical reasons. Having high schools let out earlier than elementary schools means that the older kids will be home to look after their younger siblings. The busing costs for school districts would skyrocket if all school levels ran simultaneously. The bus drivers first take the high school kids, then the middle school kids, then the elementary school kids. A school district would need a whole lot more buses running simultaneously to get everyone aged 5-18 to school at the same time. My high school and elementary/middle schools were actually two different districts, because I went to a regional high school. They had a bus-sharing scheme like this one worked out among all the districts.
The people that know the most of anybody on the planet about forecasting the effects of DST sit about 20-50ft from me. We develop software that is designed to predict electrical and gas usage based on factors such as weather, time of day (including DST), holidays, etc. I wish they had asked us our opinions or at least used our software to forecast the effects of their new policy before enacting it. You see, DST was designed before A/C was in widespread use. DST saved electricity by shifting working hours into more daylight. However, with the advent of huge A/C and heat-pumps deployed in every office, factory and store in America, DST now shifts the workday into hotter hours. As a result the DST effect has slowly dwindled (with a little work I could tell you just how much it has dwindled), and will soon reverse. The new DST times are more than likely to accelerate the problem.
No man is an island... But I wouldn't mind having a bigger moat.
No joke -- all of the clean-air legislation has started to clear out decades worth of accumulated crud (aerosols) in the atmosphere. That results in more sunlight hitting the surface and intensifies the greenhouse effect. In fact, air pollution caused by the industrial processes that release greenhouse gases may have been limiting the warming impact of those greenhouse gases for a long time. Now that the air is getting clearer, the impact of those greenhouse gases may be exacerbated. This effect is also regional since different parts of the world have differing clean air standards.
n nEmanuelEos06.pdf
Here's the original article on this subject, from June 2006:
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/shared/articles/Ma
--- JurassicPizza
Err.. telnet? In 2007? I think you need to go back to your cave.
yes, so the peak instead travels to the early morning hours
You're right that it travels to the earlier morning hours, but what travels is not the peak usage but the net difference in energy usage. So the evening hours are still peak use time - people are still going to use much more energy prepping dinner/watching evening tv/checking blogs than in the morning - but the morning peak has increased slightly. The afternoon/evening peak energy use is also usually reflected in the electricity prices, so it costs the consumer more per unit of energy in the afternoon and evening than it does in the early morning. So while there is not a net energy savings, there may be some cost savings. Granted, it will be miniscule to the average household energy consumer, but it is present. Unfortunately the way we tend to work in the US is if we have anything "extra" we decide it must be there to use, instead of save. And as others have stated, there is probably more of a cost in lost productivity because of the bi-annual clock change than a net savings of anything one would care to measure.
Personally I've always been of the mind that after electric lighting went into widespread use it was time to do away with DST one way or another, I'd prefer to just set the clocks ahead 30 minutes one year to split the difference then never change them again.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --