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.

Comments

Re:Households isn't enough

[denzacar]

Blame the person who engineered your cubicles lighting and electrical system.
Local in-cubicle lights, instead of "one switch fits all" would probably save your company millions over the years.

Still, that falls within my description of "the inner depths of the cubicle farms and underground facilities" - as far as the use of electrical lighting is considered.
Not my fault your cubicle farm's engineering and management decided to pretend that the building is under ground, in a mine somewhere.

 
On a side note...
1. Read the lines above.
2. Do some calculating.
3. Pack the results into a nice, convincing, energy/money saving and carbon footprint reducing presentation for the management.
4. Profit.

Re:Households isn't enough

[denzacar]

I meant it as a figure of speech. As in "Don't blame me. Blame the guy who designed the system."

Doesn't change the fact that the majority of office workers are either in "the inner depths of cubicle farms" as you put it, or do not have control of the lighting.
Doesn't change the fact that the majority of American workers, period, work in an environment (be it a cube farm, a hospital, or be it a retail store) where the lighting is fixed and not under their control, much less affected by DST.

Hey I gave YOU the solution to the problem that involves potential personal and global gain.
I can't make stop yelling "There is problem! There is problem!" and take a look at the solution though.

I've done as-built interior plans of hundreds of office complexes, retail spaces, factories and plants. The number of people who have control of their lighting is few. The number of people with control of their lighting AND enough ambient light to make use of DST is even less.

So you are saying that YOU are a part of the problem?
What are you complaining about then?
You obviously like it the way it is.

I'm cool with that. Masochists are people too.