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.
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....
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.
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
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.
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.)
That just can't be.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.