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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.
I've gotta say, I'm in England and as soon as the clocks change, my power consumption goes way up. I don't even use heaters where I live so I've never worked out where it's coming from....
I can say, living in Eastern Illinois (Chicago), that when Daylight savings rolls around, we do engage our coffee maker to make the transition a little easier. If enough households do this, I wouldn't be surprised if the "coffeemaker" effect is significant enough to cause serious change in energy usage. For example, our coffee maker draws 1200 watts(!) while brewing.
Of course it is very difficult to make an apples to apples comparison since energy demands are changing year to year anyway. Observed changes cannot be only attributed to the DST changes.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
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
Daylight Saving Time. Saving, singular, not Savings, plural.
As you were.
I don't care if it uses more energy, I like it when it gets dark later. I like getting out of work while it's still light outside.
The article doesn't describe how the produced the estimate of 1%. If they just looked at the year-over-year change, the number could be meaningless as that might be within the normal variation/trend of energy consumption.
The method economists use in this situation is to look at the group that your changing (Indiana) and compare the change in energy consumption to a nearby control group (Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky). You can then look at the RELATIVE changes to get a valid answer.
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Ok, I just followed the link to the actual paper, and it looks like they used several Indiana counties that were on DST prior to the policy change as their control. So, yeah, their results look pretty valid. In conclusion: Down with DST!
You might want to read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_affective_disorder
It's been known about for years, particularly near the Arctic Circle.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
If you're going to (permanently) break the 12pm = sun overhead, 12am = midnight relation, why not just ignore timezones and use UTC instead? The problem is how the time you start and stop work relates to the time that the sun rises and sets... what name you give those times doesn't matter.
I think the key phrase is "D.S.T. increases residential electricity demand."
The company or what/whoever you work for will see a positive effect, at the expense of the consumer. That is exactly what I've always believed DST was meant to do (by those who invented it), in the first place.
Second, what is the one percent based on? Previous months use? Historical and adjusted values for same month use?
Third, do the increases adjust for changes in fall activities. For instance, were the kids all going to school at the same time? Does the start of school effect the figures?Do the number of holidays effect the figures?
All I really know at this point is that some people stuck some number in spreadsheet and saw a spike. Next thing you will telling me is that the only reason the days start getting longer is that, fortunately, some traditionalist still hold a ceremony on the 21st to make it do so, rather than the much too late 25th.
I really don't know if DST helps, or if this paper is valid. However, it appears that the only variable this paper controls for is weather, and rather For instance, their data shows an increase over the month of September, exactly when parents are getting up earlier to get the kids ready for school, while July through september, months when parents do not get get kids ready for school, is not increased, even though children may be home during the day using electricity. I do see how any question is answered. Some nice data analysis, so nice inferences, but who knows if anything else.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
The whole idea of having to develop an entire infrastructure and spend so much effort (e.g. writing software, following changes in policies, synchronizing between different DST zones, even manually correcting clocks) just to supposedly save a little energy thanks to "using more sunlight" is beyond idiotic. I won't even touch the fact that to me it is kind of obvious that the DST could never work as intended. But even if we were certain it would work, the CHANGE twice a year add such an overhead that would wipe out any potential gain.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Anybody else out there think it's a little odd to be using the term "Standard Time" for a period that covers only 4 months of the year now?
How long must we continue this DST insanity? It doesn't accomplish anything beneficial. Nothing, nada, zip. If you like getting out of work in the light, then lobby to switch your state to a different time zone year round, but please please not DST.
On the other hand DST costs us plenty in confusion and lost work hours, and in maintaining software that deals with 24x7 matters. All such software must deal with one 23 hour day an one 25 hour day each year. Especially when said software integrates with external software and people it is next to impossible to assure error free transition to or from DST. Someone in the chain always drops the ball. One of these days, we're going to have an accidental missile launch or a nuclear meltdown or some really bad accident directly linked to DST.
One of the real lessons we should have learned from Y2K was that dealing with our insanely complex conventions for time and date are vastly expensive and the cause of chronic errors. New errors are still being created every day because the author deals incorrectly with time. DST just heaps on even more crap and returns no benefit.
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.)
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?
How about just getting up earlier all the year round. Move core work time to 8-4PM. That way it is nicely centred around mid-day. And mid-day can then mean exactly what it says on the tin (except for those weird time zones that jut out and extend in odd directions).
That just can't be.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
When we fall back from DST to standard time, I notice a lot of people seem more visibly depressed, or "blah."
Well, not everyone has the same reaction. What bothers me a lot more is having to get up and drive to work in the dark. I work in a cubicle in a room with no windows, so I don't see daylight until I go for lunch. I used to only have to drive to work in the dark for a few weeks in December and January, but after daylight saving time was extended a few years ago, there seems to be many more such days.
There are also safety issues. Parents don't want their kids walking to school in the dark, and year-round DST would have that effect. I know the "think of the children" argument is not popular on Slashdot, but in this case, I think it is a valid point.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
you know, back when farmers where around, then it made sense to change it. Now it just messes up everything. First of all, all of a sudden it gets light an hour early, I wake up with the sun so at what used to be 8, it's now 7 so I have to do something for that extra hour (use electricity to post on /. for example) then I come home at night and where I used to make dinner in the sunlight before plopping down in the couch or doing something, now I need electricity to light up my kitchen for the rest of winter until the sun (and my body) has caught up with the time. Next to that because my body clock is all screwed up for the rest of the month, I have one hour less sleep and one hour more activity whether it be computer, tv or something else, I live at night and I have to use electricity to light my house.
And then when summer comes around, the same thing goes the backward way. All of a sudden it's dark in the morning and I need lights in my home and office for the whole morning (because once it gets light enough, I don't notice them being on).
And there is no excuse for farmers anymore, one of my family members is an 'agricultural engineer'. These days farms are industrialized and literally work 24/7 to work their huge lands with as little (very expensive) machinery as possible (having 3-shifts of work on 1 machine). And the "biological" farmers (the smaller ones that sell their food at premium price to health stores) work at night now too since it's suppositively healthier for their crops and the environment to be cultivated (plowed etc.) at night. Even the 'classic' farmers have huge spotlights on their machines, I don't know any farmer that still has his horses pull a plow.
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Most excellent. Pedantry is becoming a lost art. You can almost never find a grammar nazi when you need one.
Let's not confuse pedantry with grammar nazism; they are not the same, though they often appear so to the layman.
A pedant is concerned with picayune details of correctness. Such a person has problems with bad science in science fiction movies, for instance.
A grammar nazi is often a very confused person who believes that is 'one true grammar.' Such a person is especially confused when we're talking about corrections to the use of the English language, as there IS no central authority for the language, and what some people assume to be hard and fast 'rules' are actually specific styles that vary from region to region, and publication to publication. The 'AP Style Guide' (AP is for Associated Press), and the Chicago Manual of Style are great examples of the latter. Neither of these are more correct than the other, unless you're writing for a publication that mandates that particular style. A grammar nazi will latch onto one of these things and never let go, not realizing that 'rules' like 'no dangling participles' and whatnot, are no more 'rules' in English than whether you put a comma or not before the last item in a list in a sentence. Many of the AP 'rules' are what they are to save space and/or ink in printed publications, and have little to no bearing (at best) in the modern world, or are unnecessary or deleterious with regard to electronic publishing. You can always tell the English majors and print geeks are involved when you see paragraphs with no blank lines between them, and a 'half-inch' indentation starting each paragraph. The Web is not the same as print (nor is it the same as TV). You'll also notice these people tend to put two spaces after a period, etc., and insist on curly apostrophes and quotation marks. They also love the phrase, 'below the fold,' as if that was a specific measurement on the Web. These people believe that all computer screens use 72 'dpi', and don't understand that CRTs, at least, can vary their 'dpi,' simply by changing resolution. I belive I've strayed from my point here - sorry.
I prefer clarity and ease of understanding before any perceived 'rules' of English grammar, which certainly proves, at least in my case, that pedantry and Grammar Nazism are not the same.
Though I really hate it when people put in unnecessary apostrophes. "CD's" for instance. Gack.
both em-dash and hyphen are available on your keyboard btw
What you linked to does not prove what you said. Putting in codes to output the characters you want is not, in my mind, the same as 'available on your keyboard,' and Pedantic-Man isn't especially interested in such nonsense as outputting different types of dashes/hyphens when the 'minus key' on the keyboard will do for the sake of clarity. Pedantic-Man is also pretty lazy. :)
Pedantic-Man says, "Stay out of trouble!"