Slashdot Mirror


Daylight Savings Time Increases Energy Use In Indiana

enbody writes "The Freakonomics Blog at NYTimes.com reports on a study of Indiana energy use for daylight savings time showing an increase in energy use of 1%. 'The dataset consists of more than 7 million observations on monthly billing data for the vast majority of households in southern Indiana for three years. Our main finding is that — contrary to the policy's intent — D.S.T. increases residential electricity demand.'" Maybe that's just from millions of coffee makers being pressed into extra duty.

10 of 388 comments (clear)

  1. its because they are increasing the day by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 5, Funny

    Of COURSE daylight savings stuff changes how much electricity you use.

    Afterall, if they give us an extra hour of daytime then your appliances are running for a full 25 hours a day.

    you have to run all your appliances for that extra hour every single day all winter.

    --
    liqbase :: faster than paper
    1. Re:its because they are increasing the day by ChromaticDragon · · Score: 4, Funny

      Sigh...

      Must we correct such silly ideas?!?

      The extra hour is given to you in the Summer! Not the winter. In the US, the winter is during Standard Time.

      It's that extra hour of A/C, not simple appliances.

  2. Re:PedanticMan to the rescue! by Tumbleweed · · Score: 5, Funny

    Whoops, sorry, that was supposed to be 'Pedantic-Man', with a dash. How embarrassing.

  3. I thought it's for creating jobs? by sam0737 · · Score: 3, Funny

    I thought the change of DST rule was to create IT jobs in adopting the old system, and troubleshooting the mess introduced by the old rules, etc....No?

    Anyway, every time operation should be done in UTC in the core especially when it has to deal with cross timezone operations and globalization.

    On the other hand, It's stupid to see Windows can only handle 2 active rules before Vista at any given time, on the other hand *nix and Vista can have define unlimited rules given a period of the time. I couldn't imagine how one would devise a local time using the DST rule of time in Windows XP, probably revert to reinvent-the-wheel?...luckily I don't have to deal with anything like that yet.

  4. Re:PedanticMan to the rescue! by Tumbleweed · · Score: 3, Funny

    You mean a hyphen, something that shouldn't be there either. Nice try, so-called "Pedantic Man."

    Sadly, I have no hyphen on my keyboard, and no desire to go poking through a character map to find one, so I had to use a dash. Check the ASCII character. :)

    Don't feel bad - I *am* a professional!

  5. For us farmers by willworkforbeer · · Score: 3, Funny

    We need the extra hour of daylight for growing our Fall crops, so leave DST alone.

    --
    Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
  6. What do you mean "you like" ? by Kohath · · Score: 5, Funny

    What do you mean by you like? Didn't you hear? We're all supposed to conserve energy for The Earth. It's not about what anyone likes, it's about sacrificing our comfort, our prosperity, and our way of life to benefit The Earth. The Earth demands sacrifice!

    Now, start listening to your Leaders. They know what choices you should make. They say you should conserve energy. For The Earth. Any choice that uses more energy is Bad. Any choice that uses less is Good. There are no exceptions for productivity and no consideration for humanity. Just use less. Obey.

    (The Leaders are exempt and may use all the energy they wish.)

  7. This energy saving plan brought to you by by presidenteloco · · Score: 4, Funny

    The Bush administration, with
    its fine misunderestimated mathematical minds,
    who also calculated that if Osama Bin Laden
    was hiding on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border,
    we should go defeat him in Baghdad.

    Oh and the same minds who calculated that
    even though co2 lets in visible-light and ultraviolet
    energy from the Sun and reflects and traps in infra-red
    energy that radiates back off the Earth, it won't cause
    global warming, because that would reduce oil
    sale revenues.

    It's honestly quite a shocker that this cunningly
    devised plan didn't work.

    --

    Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
  8. Re:PedanticMan to the rescue! by Golddess · · Score: 3, Funny

    When you enter DST, you jump ahead one hour, skipping completely over it. That hour is being saved until you switch back to standard time, where it is then used up.

    --
    "I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
  9. Oh come on now... by NotQuiteReal · · Score: 5, Funny
    A government mandate that produces results contrary to the policy's intent?

    That just can't be.

    --
    This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.