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."

Comments

Quit'cher Bitchin'

[duerra]

Look, I understand people that want to take a stab at the administration - Bush's administration has done far more harm than good, but come on - bashing like this summary is just not necessary. This was a widely supported idea beyond just the US - a number of countries followed suit in the idea. At the very least, it didn't HURT anything - so why bitch about it so much? Oh well, you had to patch your systems. It's over and done with. No need to try and make this into a "prime opportunity" to bash the administration for at least trying. There's plenty of other things to gripe about when it comes to this administration - learn to pick your fights, otherwise you just end up looking like a giant douche.... or a turd sandwich.

Re:Quit'cher Bitchin'

[MeanderingMind]

Actually, it's arguable it did hurt a number of things.

1) A significant amount of manpower had to be expended in order to assure that the computer systems across the world supporting this change were ready for it.

2) A number of home and business computer systems alike failed to change, sometimes resulting in mischeduled meetings and moderate confusion.

3) Congress wasted time on this bill that could have been spent getting something important done, such as finally hammering out a definate government policy on Stem Cell research, abortions, or actually making a true impact on the energy issue we face.

Time and money were wasted, for an energy revenue of nil. It may not have increased energy costs, but costs in general were incurred.

Re:Quit'cher Bitchin'

[raju1kabir]

So yeah, it hurt a lot.

Some tiny number of people had to wrestle with Windows inanity (and that's a self-selected group of people who voluntarily took jobs that require wrestling with Windows inanity).

Meanwhile, a huge number of people get a quality-of-life boost from the extra daylight in the evening, which makes it more pleasant to walk home from work, to run late-afternoon errands, or just to enjoy some time outdoors on nice spring and autumn days.

In an ideal world they'd keep pushing it back until the start and end finally met, and then abolish it entirely, leaving the clocks on summer time all year round. But until that time, at least things are a bit better. And next time they change it, you Windows-wrestlers will know what to do.

Re:Quit'cher Bitchin'

[raju1kabir]

Tiny number?!? Where in hell have you been?

There are almost 400 million people in the USA. A tiny number of those are Windows sysadmins.

Re:Quit'cher Bitchin'

[shawn(at)fsu]

I was late to work that day because no alarm clock whether it be cell phone or manual alarm could cope with the automatic change.

What do you mean no manual alarm could cope? How did manual alarms cope before the change? Thats right you set it before you went to bed, This isn't rocket science. One more point. The Time change occurred on Sunday morning at or about 2am. You had a whole day to look at your clock and figure out it was a hour off before you went to be Sunday night. It's not DST fault you were late to work it was your fault. Nice try though

Oh and for the record my cell phone did change on it's own on time.

Re:Quit'cher Bitchin'

[codemachine]

Yet most people in Saskatchewan would bitch about how behind the times the province is for not going along with the idiocy that is DST.

Any oil companies based in Alberta (which observes DST) just have their Saskatchewan employees go to work an hour earlier in the summer. Which proves it really isn't that hard to change your business hours to accomodate the season.

I think this is a case where Saskatchewan is so far "behind the times" that they may be more "modern" than everyone else. With the 9-5 workday losing significance all the time, DST is already becoming less and less relevant anyhow. It will likely continue to be less relevant until it is finally abolished. Hopefully Saskatchewan doesn't decide to adopt it right before it becomes totally obsolete.

As you said, I think Saskatchewan has it right, and I hope that they don't change it just to be like everyone else. Because in this instance, what everyone else is doing doesn't make sense anymore.

alternatively...

[boarder]

... we can just get rid of DST altogether, since it has been shown to not do dick except annoy people and cost companies money in IT time.

Keep it summer time year round if you ask me.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Are you high?

[ObiWanStevobi]

First of all, this is a move by congress, no one is bashing "The Administration"

No harm, no foul, huh? How about the time it took to patch my file transfer program. I'm sure my employers don't appreciate the extra money spent. Not to mention tying up our IT staff trying to get time clocks/etc. fixed when the Windows patch f#$%ed up the time then fixed it again two days later. There's two days of pay for the IT staff, not to mention lost time where other things didn't get fixed.

And it's us who look like giant douches for complaining?!!

It would mean REMOVING patches...

[erroneus]

...and I'm all for it!

This DST2007 thing has been a real pain in my ass. I know that the US government hates to admit failure, so we won't leave Iraq and we won't back off on DST2007... wish we would though. It has caused a lot of problems.

Re:It's also been unseasonably warm

[DragonWriter]

You cant extrapolate "it doesnt help" from one months worth of data.

You can with a change in DST that is supposed to save energy on both ends, and only affects one month on each end.

For other things, maybe not.

Selfish Bastard

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Not for those of us who have visual overstimulation induced migraines. This just means that they've stolen several hours of my precious DARKNESS in return for no monetary advantage.

Look on the bright side...

[Kadin2048]

3) Congress wasted time on this bill that could have been spent getting something important done, such as finally hammering out a definate government policy on Stem Cell research, abortions, or actually making a true impact on the energy issue we face.

See, that's the glass-half-empty talking. Just look on the bright side: When they were wasting their time turning out this ridiculous waste of time and paper, it meant that they weren't really screwing anything else up!

Please, Congress, do us all a favor: spend your time on things like creating new "National $FOO Week"s. What -- there aren't any free weeks left? Okay, I've got one: why don't you guys try to fix the date of Easter? I'm sure that won't take you too long.

The more idiotic, banal stuff that I know the Congresscritters are doing, the better it makes me feel, because at least I know they're staying out of trouble. It's when they go quiet for a while that I start to worry. The further away they stay from the "real issues," the happier I am. As absolutely fucked as the system we have is, don't you even think for a moment that with hard work and diligence, they couldn't make it at least ten times worse.

Congratulations, Congress, on your brilliant plan. By all means, keep up the great work.

Re:Look on the bright side...

[Chmcginn]

The fact that there's more "funny" than "insightful" mods on this comment worries me.

Re:Amen

[nebaz]

some schoolkids have to wait for the bus in the dark

I never understood school schedules. It has been shown that teenagers naturally wake up later in the day, and that elementary school students wake up earlier. Yet it is the elementary schools that start at 8:30 and the high schools that start at 7:30. Why not make school like work, where it runs 9-5, on a schedule more matching that of the parents? Some will counter that high school students have jobs in the evening, so let them start earlier. Why should jobs drive school schedules?

Re:Who cares about energy savings

[dazedNconfuzed]

Fine. You like more light. GET UP EARLIER. And leave my clock alone.

I _really_ dislike getting up before dawn. I mean deep viceral psychological bio-cycle "why am I getting up at night" kind of dislike. Just when dawn was arriving at a decent time, you "I want more light so I'll force everyone else to change their schedules" people make me get up at 5:00AM EST instead of 6AM (and now you're talking about pushing it back to 4:00AM?!?).

The clock reflects astronomical realities of earth/sun positioning. Noon is supposed to mean the sun is overhead, mid-day. Cocky people then decide they don't like that arrangement, and declare what _is_ shall be different from what they _want_ reality to be. A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, and calling dung a "rose" doesn't make it smell any better. Calling 5:00AM "6:00AM Daylight Saving Time" doesn't change the fact that it's really 5:00AM, and the combination of light and circadian rhythms means it's still time to sleep.

It's almost enough to make me move to Arizona where they ignore this nonsense.

Seriously, man - it really messes up my internal clock. Midnight to six is my time to _sleep_; mess with that, and you're messing with my ability to function.

You want more light? YOU get up earlier. Leave my clock alone; I'll be a lot more productive that way.

Prior experience

[asackett]

What amazes me about the whole thing is that nobody bothered to look back to 1973 when Nixon did essentially the same thing. No energy was saved then, either.

Change your schedule, not my clock

[KingSkippus]

Do you people have any clue what the concept of "noon" is supposed to be? In case you've forgotten, it's supposed to be the time of day when the sun is highest in the sky. It's supposed to be the time when there is as much daylight behind us as is in front of us.

For practical purposes, this isn't exact, but we've done a pretty good job with splitting the world up into 24 time zones so that it's somewhat close.

But not any more! No, now noon is just some arbitrary point during the day when we find it convenient to be. We want more time at the end of the day, so let's just move noon an hour ahead, right?

WRONG! I have a better idea. Instead of dinking around with clocks and redefining what something means that has been around since the beginning of recorded time, why don't we just have businesses shift their hours around?

Imagine how nice this would be. We never change our clocks. Twice a year, government changes its hours. The Post Office, for example, doesn't open at 8:00am during the summer, it opens at 7:00am, and it closes an hour earlier, too. Businesses that choose to do so follow suit and make sure its employees know when to show up. I suspect that almost all of them would, and probably most companies would have a policy that says something like, "When the government shifts its hours, we're shifting ours also."

Everyone's happy. People get their extra hour at the end of the day. No one has to write stupid software patches to account for when DST is. Atlanta, Georgia is always GMT-5, never GMT-4 like it is now. People don't think Arizonans are weird because half the year they're on Mountain time and half the year they're on Pacific. If government wants to change its hours a few weeks earlier next year, there's no issue at all, they can just announce it a few months in advance, and when the time comes, do it.

I'm sorry, but people who think that DST is a good thing are idiots. If you want to change your schedule, change your schedule. But leave my freakin' clock alone.

Re:Change your schedule, not my clock

[PasteEater]

why don't we just have businesses shift their hours around?

Because it would be a much larger pain in the ass. So, some businesses follow government time, and some don't. Some shift their schedules, and some don't. How utterly ridiculous. Which option would your business take when half of the other businesses change their hours, and the others don't?

DST is about simplicity: Ok everyone, change your clocks!

The measurement of time is arbitrary in and of itself. By your rationale, we should adjust time daily so that noon is always the point in time when there is *exactly* half a day of sunlight left.

I'm sorry, but people who think that DST is a good thing are idiots.

Possibly, but anyone who endorses your plan doesn't exactly have both oars in the water either.

Re:Change your schedule, not my clock

[TheDormouse]

Wow. I really don't think I could disagree with you more.

Your world:
1. Having to investigate when every business opens "this" time of the year. Since there's no standard, each business can decide when or if they want to change their schedule.
2. Having to deal with public transportation schedules that may or may not change the same time that your place of business decides to change its schedule.
3. Businesses having to maintain signage that says "Open 9am-11pm November-March, Open 8am-10pm April-October."
4. Someone having to answer the phone constantly at your place of business asking "When are you open?" since they are less likely to memorize your business's flexible hours. (And don't think that an automated attendant that answers the phone with this information is going to prevent this question getting through to a human; it won't.)
5. Getting to have noon magically when the sun is at the highest point in the sky. You know, if you happen to live on the meridian of your time zone where this actually occurs.

Or the real world:
1. Businesses keep reliable and memorizable hours.
2. Public transportation schedules vacillate rarely.
3. Businesses can keep their easy "Open 9am-11pm Every Day" signage.
4. Still have to answer the phone at work explaining your hours, but probably to fewer people since your hours aren't confusing and are a tad easier to memorize.
5. Noon is when it is. Doesn't matter since you can't reliably measure the time by looking at the sun most places in the world anyway.
6. Throw around a frisbee an extra hour after work in the summer when the weather is nice.
7. Change a dozen clocks and watches twice a year at a predetermined time that's widely publicized in the media, probably pre-marked on your calendar, and even changes automatically on machines with well-designed software.

So, um, are all your clocks especially difficult to change or something? Or do you have like 40 thousand of them? Oh, you're a sysadmin who got bit by the DST change? Refer to the end of #7.

Re:Change your schedule, not my clock

[Phisbut]

We don't seem to be living in the same "real world". What you described is an ideal real-world, not the real-real-world.

1
GP's world: Having to investigate when every business opens "this" time of the year. Since there's no standard, each business can decide when or if they want to change their schedule.
Your real world: Businesses keep reliable and memorizable hours.
My real world: Even with DST, businesses have no global standard. Some open at 7am, some at 8am, some at 9am, some at 10am. Some stores close at 5pm, some at 6pm, some at 9pm. Some of them are even open 24 hours a day. Heck, stores in the same mall can have different hours.

2
GP's world: Having to deal with public transportation schedules that may or may not change the same time that your place of business decides to change its schedule.
Your real world: Public transportation schedules vacillate rarely.
My real world: Even with DST, fewer people work in the summer time. A lot of people are on vacation. Many public transportation schedules reflect this by having a different "summer schedule".

3
GP's world: Businesses having to maintain signage that says "Open 9am-11pm November-March, Open 8am-10pm April-October."
Your real world: Businesses can keep their easy "Open 9am-11pm Every Day" signage.
My real world: Even with DST, businesses already maintain signage that says "Open 10am-5pm Monday-Wednesday, Open 10am-9pm Thursday-Friday, Open 9am-5pm Saturday, Open 11am-5pm Sunday.

4
GP's world: Someone having to answer the phone constantly at your place of business asking "When are you open?" since they are less likely to memorize your business's flexible hours. (And don't think that an automated attendant that answers the phone with this information is going to prevent this question getting through to a human; it won't.)
Your real world: Still have to answer the phone at work explaining your hours, but probably to fewer people since your hours aren't confusing and are a tad easier to memorize.
My real world: (See 1 and 3)

Re:

[Antony-Kyre]

It would be better to switch back. Why? Because there are unfixed errors in a lot of software that are still causing problems. For the fixed bugs, well, those can be "unfixed" if they were fixed in the first place. It isn't too late to switch back.

Re:Eliminate DST ... and Time Zones too

[cpeterso]

Swatch Beats are the solution to time zones!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time

Re:Eliminate DST ... and Time Zones too

[StikyPad]

Basically because you'd still have to do the calculations, but you'd lost the convenience of having the same frame of reference in all locales, as 1200 would cease to be relevant. It would probably just make things more difficult.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=22613 3&cid=18316935
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=158401 &cid=13272080

Re:Eliminate DST ... and Time Zones too

[Guppy06]

"Back in the day, when people's interactions were mostly local, time zones might have been harmless."

That's funny. Standard time and the resulting time zones came about because there were more interactions on a national and even global scale, thanks to railroads, telegraphs and radio. Keeping the time difference between two points an integer number of hours is far more preferable to what preceded it: everybody using local mean time for their own meridian. Would you like to keep track of the ~12 minute time difference between New Orleans and Chicago? The ~16 minute difference between San Francisco and Los Angeles? The ~12 minute difference between New York and Boston?

"They're just a PITA -- time is an arbitrary number anyway, so who cares if the clock says 6pm or 6am when you wake up?"

We're a diurnal species. If mechanical time did not approximate solar time to some degree, the former would be abandoned for the latter.

"Imagine having every computer (and every log, timestamp, calendar, etc.) in the world on GMT. Imagine scheduling conference calls and not having someone confuse which time zone it was scheduled for."

Imagine a world where not everybody's job involves timestamps, computer logs, or conference calls. Or, instead of imagining, experience reality a little instead.

At any rate, if it works so well, use your life as an example and set all your personal timepieces to UTC.

Re:This just in

[47Ronin]

I don't see how this is saying Bush sucks. It blamed congress for the change in Daylight savings time, and last I checked, congress is run by the Democrats.

BZZZZT! You lose. Maybe you should wind back the clock and note who was in control of Congress when this bill was signed. Can you guess which party had control of both the House and the Senate at the time?

No it wasn't.

[mrchaotica]

You got exactly the same amount of light that you would have gotten anyway. You just think there was more because you didn't sleep in as late as you usually would have.

Personally, I think anybody who needs the government to trick them into getting up early is a moron, but morons' opinions may differ...

Re:No it wasn't.

[Jeremi]

Personally, I think anybody who needs the government to trick them into getting up early is a moron, but morons' opinions may differ...

Perhaps it's not so much needing the government to trick you into getting up earlier, as it is needing the government to trick your boss into opening your place of work an hour earlier.

Re:Get up early? No way!

[Anonymous Coward]

... completely ignoring the "functioning in society" bit.

People who complain about the gubmint are often just complaining about having to deal with other people.

Sure, if I never had to talk to anyone or do anything, I'd get up at dawn and go to bed at sunset too.

But I'd also be living in a cave, and be dead by now.

Re:Eliminate DST ... and Time Zones too

[StikyPad]

You don't have to do any calculations. Why would you ever deal with two time zones?

If you don't have to deal with multiple timezones then what the bloody hell do you care about what time it is in a different timezone?!?

"what time do I wake up in the morning?" and that's not a calculation, but an answer you get handed to you when you get off the plane or ask a local.

Nonsense. "The store closes at 5." "The store closes at 9." You know the former means "early evening" and the latter means "late evening" because we use time zones. Replace that with "The store closes at 0300," and suddenly you haven't a clue. Sure, you can figure out that local "noon" is 1800, therefore it closes at the equivelant of 9PM, but is that really easier?

Yes, one of the side effects is that some locales border timezones and have to do a minor calculation to figure out what time the stores close in the adjacent timezone, but that wouldn't go away with everyone using UTC -- you'd still have to remember that it's an hour earlier/later.

Don't get me wrong, DST is a ridiculous "solution," but discarding local time is equally ridiculous.

It was mostly about peak shaving, I thought

[rbrander]

I couldn't handle reading 300 posts, but I did search the whole topic for the word "peak" and nobody at 2+ used it. So here it is: we had a local news article in Calgary about the lack of change in TOTAL consumption,( just as many lights on in the AM as off in PM) but that it was good because it shaved the PEAK CONSUMPTION.

People use the most energy right after they get home from work, basically; TV, computers (like me right now), cooking and other household operations.

Removing added lighting needs AT THAT TIME reduces the maximum generating capacity you need available to meet the peak demand. Which means they build a new power plant for your area in 2014 instead of 2012, or whatever. The time-cost of money means real savings on your power bill - even at constant total kWh consumed.