Extra Daylight Savings May Confuse the Gadgets 933
CrimeDoggy writes "In the energy bill to be signed by the President today (August 8), changes are to be made that extend daylight savings time. The bill would start daylight time three weeks earlier and end it a week later as an energy-saving measure. Many devices such as VCRs, cell phones, and watches would still operate on the previous schedule, potentially causing problems."
Please just drop it. (Score:5, Informative)
Daylight Saving...No "S" (Score:5, Informative)
Daylight Saving Time... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Time for a change... (Score:2, Informative)
Decimal time (Score:3, Informative)
And I wish the world were so nice that we could all use metric things and other 10-based units to match our number system.
Re:Time in the Day = Save Energy? (Score:2, Informative)
In early 1900s, if more daylight led to less electric light use (a sizeable portion of the electric bill) then there would be significant savings.
In modern times however, it is but a blip on the monthly electric bill, with AC units, refrigerators, freezers, TVs, etc all demanding almost constant power draw. Lights simply aren't a huge area of savings anymore.
Even more so this could actually INCREASE our electric costs: I have a programmable thermostat, that I set to be warmer in the summer when I'm not home, then turn on so it's cool when I return from work. Now I'm home more hours during the hottest part of the day which in turn uses more power for my AC unit which is wildly more expensive to run than a few lightbulbs.
Re:Purpose? (Score:5, Informative)
How about this? [nist.gov].
Solution: Move to AZ (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Please just drop it. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Purpose? (Score:3, Informative)
OK, you're dumb. (Sorry, I had, too).
It's a simple idea, really. Let's say most people go to bed at around 11:00. At dusk, everyone turns on their house lights. With daylight saving time (DST), dusk is 8:30, so lights are on for 2.5 hours. Without DST, dusk is an hour earlier, so lights are on for 3.5 hours. (What is really happening with DST is that we are sleeping through less daylight in the morning. In the winter there is no daylight to waste in the morning so this doesn't work).
Having said this, I'm not sure the savings works out as well as the above would suggest. DST means that people like me have to run our AC's an hour longer at the hottest part of the day, wasting more energy than we save. (Presumably, the other place I would spend that time is work, at that will have AC running whether I'm there or not).
Re:Time for a change... (Score:3, Informative)
In the pre-electricity "modern" era, families that stayed up after dark would light their homes with candles and oil lamps [chariot.net.au], which could get quite expensive
Extrapolating that to today, there is still a chronological swing to the usage of energy... in the bulk power industry, this is called a "load curve", and basically follows a sine wave... there's a valley in usage over the early morning period when everyone is asleep, and as people wake up, the load increases in the "morning ramp", reaches its peak in the afternoon, and drops off in the late evening as people head to sleep.
Now, moving the clocks to line up with the daylight periods would shift the energy usage one hour earlier in the day. In the morning in the summer, the sun is already up, so you're not going to save much electricity. However, by shifting the evening clocks forward, it removes some of the "lighting" time in the evening, which lowers load on the system, allows the generators that match load to drop their output lower earlier, they burn less fuel, and the economy as a whole saves money on imported fuel.
Re:Time for a change... (Score:3, Informative)
Which will still confuse the people that know that "EST" does not mean "Eastern" but "Eastern Standard Time," and the only state that is on EST right now is Indiana. Everyone else is on CDT or EDT. (CDT and EST just happen to coincide at the moment).
Re:Time for a change... (Score:2, Informative)