Daylight Saving Change Saved No Power

Brett writes "Results from energy companies are coming in, and the word is that moving Daylight Saving Time forward three weeks had no measurable impact on power consumption. The attempt by the US Congress to make it look like they were doing something about the energy crisis has been exposed as the waste it is. But the new DST is probably here to stay — letting the bill expire would mean re-patching a lot of systems again next year. So much for saving energy."

Never mind lost productivity...

[CrazyTalk]

Just two quick examples of the COST of the change, due to lost productivity - I live in the Eastern US, and someone in Ireland missed a conference call with us because everyone on both sides of the Atlantic thought that Ireland was always 5 hours ahead (for some reason, people found it impossible to fathom that this wasnt the case if we changes our clock and they didn't, but whatever). Example number two - a contractor in brazil was going to take down our servers at 5:00 EDST but actually took them down at 4:00 since they didnt know about the time change.

Re:Fine by me...

[DragonWriter]

For me, I'd prefer it's this way all year long but I don't have kids that ride a school bus (isn't that the main reason they claim we do this in the first place?)

The reason we do it is that people are more likely to shop if they get off work and it is still light out, and thus it is a way to subsidize retail and related industries (the theoretical energy savings are based on the assumption that businesses won't change their schedule and will consume constant power, but the people staying out shopping won't go home and turn on their home appliances.)

Modded funny?

[TheDarkener]

If I had mod points, I'd mod Informative!!

Seriously, this "useful" change was nothing but a waste of time, AND clocks. All those clocks/devices that automatically change according to the standardized time? Useless. Software patches? Quite impossible for most.

Looks like the waste management facilities will see a rise in borked electronics because of this - and that does precisely 0 for the environment, too.

Re:Are you high?

[sqlrob]

Still the administrations fault. He could've vetoed it.

Re:Quit'cher Bitchin'

[edwardpickman]

The reason is it's yet more proof it's a do nothing Congress. Even when they do something it has no positive effect. Business sees energy reform cutting into their short term bottom line and that's all most care about so don't expect Congress to get off their asses anytime soon. Alot of the changes will save money over time but it'll cut into their short term profits so they are seen as a bad thing. Any time you do anything some one isn't going to like it so Congress has taken the stance of simply doing nothing. They are big on committes and making statements but they rarely take proactive action on anything. We need leadership not smoke and mirrors. They would have accomplished far more by requiring a 5% or 10% increase in gas mileage. The car companies could easily meet those goals and it would save a huge amount of oil. Even that is seen as draconian in the Bush administration.

Re:Quit'cher Bitchin'

[Z0mb1eman]

This was a widely supported idea beyond just the US - a number of countries followed suit in the idea

A number of countries followed suit out of necessity to stay synchronized with U.S. businesses, rather than because of any particular support for the idea.

Re:Never mind lost productivity...

[krlynch]

I live in the Eastern US, and someone in Ireland missed a conference call with us because everyone on both sides of the Atlantic thought that Ireland was always 5 hours ahead

Even before this change, there was a difference in the start dates of Daylight Saving and Summer Time across the Atlantic; for the last decade, it was a one week difference at the start. Before then, all hell broke loose across Europe, as different countries started and ended at different times. Most of the world outside Europe and North America doesn't bother with EVER changing their clocks, but those in the Southern Hemisphere that DO observe Daylight Saving do so roughly 180 days out of phase with the Northern Hemisphere. The time deltas between two points on the globe can differ by many hours (up to three!) throughout the year due to DST changes. Dealing with an international scientific collaboration as I do sensitizes you to the insanity of DST rather rapidly :-)

Re:Quit'cher Bitchin'

[2short]

"Congress wasted time on this bill that could have been spent getting something important done"

Dude, this is the previous (Republican controlled) Congress we're talking about. They spent the vast majority of their time on vacation. They convened for fewer days than any Congress in a hundred years. I suppose they could have used the time spent debating this bill to do something meaningful, but they weren't exactly hurting for time.

PG&E made some money from me

[aegl]

PG&E (Pacific Gas & Electric) whined to the public utilities commission that it would cost them $35M to go out and reprogram all the time-of-use meters. So the PUC let them stick with the first Sunday in April, last Sunday in October rules.

For me this meant that the "part-peak" tariff ran from 6pm to 9pm, instead of from 5pm to 8pm for the past three weeks. This cost me two ways:

1) Electricity generated by my solar PV system between 5pm and 6pm spun the meter backwards counting off-peak kWh instead of part-peak kWh.

2) I use very little power from 5pm to 6pm (I'm generally not home from work), I definitely use more from 8pm to 9pm (I'm home, and it is dark so I have lights on). So moving the part-peak time an hour later meant that I bought more of the higher priced power than the cheaper off-peak power.

-Tony

end DST

[mrtexe]

A web site said it better than I could:

STANDARDTIME.COM SAYS: If we are saving energy let's go year round with Daylight Savings Time. If we are not saving energy let's drop Daylight Savings Time! [standardtime.com]

Enough of this daylight time, reset-the-clocks insanity. Just stop the madness.

Re:Quit'cher Bitchin'

[nsayer]

In an ideal world they'd keep pushing it back until the start and end finally met,

This would cause problems in northern latitudes during the winter. The sun potentially wouldn't rise until very late in the morning, which would be tres suck. The last time they tried this was during WWII, and there was a noted rise in the early morning accident rate in the winter. Of course, you could also partially blame that on the blackouts, but then without War Time the blackouts wouldn't have had as much impact in the later morning hours.

Congress member names

[michaelmalak]

The mass media seem to omit the names of the Congress members responsible for this fiasco. Here are the names from their own boastful press relese [house.gov]:

• Fred Upton (R-MI)
• Ed Markey (D-MA)

Re:Never mind lost productivity...

[curunir]

The Brazil example is a good illustration of what makes the DST change so annoying.

I live in California, so I'm on pacific time. Brazil's major cities are, IIRC, two time zones ahead of eastern time. So if I know the time in California, how do I figure out the time in Brazil? Well, I have to know what day of the year it is. It's 5 time zones ahead of me, but it can either 5 hours ahead during the times of the year when the US has switched its time and Brazil hasn't yet switched theirs. Or it can be 4 (US summer) or 6 (Brazilian summer) if both have switched.

If we got rid of this nonsense, Brazil would be 5 hours ahead. Period.

Re:alternatively...

[prockcore]

Maybe you should live somewhere where there is less than 6 hours of daylight during the shortest day of the year and see if you still have the same view.

The shortest day of the year happens on STANDARD TIME.. DST has no affect on the shortest day of the year!

Re:Don't foget about October.... (for the children

[MillionthMonkey]

Yeah, the widening of the DST period at its other endpoint, in October, was only done to make daylight trick-or-treating possible. Search the congressional record for it. They changed it by one week just to get Halloween in there. American candy makers had been lobbying for the change for decades.

So stupid. I was never molested when trick-or-treating as a child because the predators couldn't see me in the dark.

On the Flip Side

[camperdave]

That's six more weeks in the year when it will be light out when I (and a lot of the rest of you) go home from work.

On the flip side, however, it means that there's six more weeks in the year when it is still dark when we go to work... the other side of the coin.

Re:alternatively...

[AK Marc]

There is never a time when that is the case. Sunset was at 5-5:30 when DST went into effect. Sunset will get later and later, but never was sunset 3:30 before DST. What you want is all clocks ahead an hour or two all year long. That arguement may be valid, but is irrelevant to setting clocks ahead about the time there is 12 hours of sun-up world-wide. It would be nice to change the clocks to have the sun come up at 5 p.m. in the winter when there will be only a few hours of sunlight. You would go to bed at sunset at a reasonable hour. But again, what happens on days where the sun sets at 3:30 is irrelevant to the issue of DST.

that's impractical, unfortunately

[icefaerie]

Yes, but it will remain that way for largely practical reasons. Having high schools let out earlier than elementary schools means that the older kids will be home to look after their younger siblings. The busing costs for school districts would skyrocket if all school levels ran simultaneously. The bus drivers first take the high school kids, then the middle school kids, then the elementary school kids. A school district would need a whole lot more buses running simultaneously to get everyone aged 5-18 to school at the same time. My high school and elementary/middle schools were actually two different districts, because I went to a regional high school. They had a bus-sharing scheme like this one worked out among all the districts.

Re:Fine by me...

[General Fault]

The people that know the most of anybody on the planet about forecasting the effects of DST sit about 20-50ft from me. We develop software that is designed to predict electrical and gas usage based on factors such as weather, time of day (including DST), holidays, etc. I wish they had asked us our opinions or at least used our software to forecast the effects of their new policy before enacting it. You see, DST was designed before A/C was in widespread use. DST saved electricity by shifting working hours into more daylight. However, with the advent of huge A/C and heat-pumps deployed in every office, factory and store in America, DST now shifts the workday into hotter hours. As a result the DST effect has slowly dwindled (with a little work I could tell you just how much it has dwindled), and will soon reverse. The new DST times are more than likely to accelerate the problem.

Global brightening is real!

[JurassicPizza]

No joke -- all of the clean-air legislation has started to clear out decades worth of accumulated crud (aerosols) in the atmosphere. That results in more sunlight hitting the surface and intensifies the greenhouse effect. In fact, air pollution caused by the industrial processes that release greenhouse gases may have been limiting the warming impact of those greenhouse gases for a long time. Now that the air is getting clearer, the impact of those greenhouse gases may be exacerbated. This effect is also regional since different parts of the world have differing clean air standards.

Here's the original article on this subject, from June 2006:

http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/shared/articles/Man nEmanuelEos06.pdf [psu.edu]

Re:Valid reason to know local noon..

[Technician]

If you have a local magnetic anomility, setting a C-band dish can be difficult as a magnetic compass may get your polar mount off enough to cause tracking problems. A sunny day and knowledge of local noon makes finding true North/South very simple. It's the direction of the shadow of the plumb bob line at local noon.

Re:Change your schedule, not my clock

[ryanov]

Schedule change.

Problem solved.

Re:Never mind lost productivity...

[RobertLTux]

easyish solution next time send a link to the timeanddate.com world clock with your cities coded in

Re:Fine by me...

[myyrk]

DST was conceived by Benjamin Franklin in 1784.

Earthhour

[defiant1]

Something that may be of interest: In Sydney last weekend we all turned our lights out for an hour... check out http://earthhour.smh.com.au/index.php?option=com_c ontent&task=view&id=59 [smh.com.au] for the stats. According to Energy Australia, for the hour between 7.30pm and 8.30pm on 31 March 2007, there was a 10.2% reduction in electricity consumption across the Sydney CBD. This is calculated as follows: Sydney CBD temperature during Earth Hour was 19.8c. Typical energy consumption at this temperature between 7.30 and 8.30 is 228,180 KWh. Actual electricity consumption in the Sydney CBD at this time was 204,900 KWh. Energy Australia analysed data over 4 years to get the typical consumption on a Saturday night in the CBD during March and April. This takes into account daylight savings and weather. http://earthhour.smh.com.au/ [smh.com.au] for more info.

Re:It wasted power on my end

[Creepy Crawler]

So why didnt you disable the "Windows Time" service? MS put a NTP client with a ntp.microsoft.com address. I'd rather have a NTP server of my own and it only pulling time off of a level 2 NTP server.

That would make my server a NTP level 3 and my clients level 4. 4 Deviations of time off of nasa... Not too shabby.

Re:Our patching is done as well.

[totally bogus dude]

Err.. telnet? In 2007? I think you need to go back to your cave.

Re:Our patching is done as well.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully nobody is actually using telnet on an unsecured network...
but if they are they'd better patch Solaris 10.
http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetke y=1-26-102802-1 [sun.com]

Let me check the year, oh yeah, 2007!

Re:Fine by me...

[paradoja]

Not sure he did so: William Willet [wikipedia.org]

Re:It was mostly about peak shaving, I thought

[Jtheletter]

yes, so the peak instead travels to the early morning hours

You're right that it travels to the earlier morning hours, but what travels is not the peak usage but the net difference in energy usage. So the evening hours are still peak use time - people are still going to use much more energy prepping dinner/watching evening tv/checking blogs than in the morning - but the morning peak has increased slightly. The afternoon/evening peak energy use is also usually reflected in the electricity prices, so it costs the consumer more per unit of energy in the afternoon and evening than it does in the early morning. So while there is not a net energy savings, there may be some cost savings. Granted, it will be miniscule to the average household energy consumer, but it is present. Unfortunately the way we tend to work in the US is if we have anything "extra" we decide it must be there to use, instead of save. And as others have stated, there is probably more of a cost in lost productivity because of the bi-annual clock change than a net savings of anything one would care to measure.
Personally I've always been of the mind that after electric lighting went into widespread use it was time to do away with DST one way or another, I'd prefer to just set the clocks ahead 30 minutes one year to split the difference then never change them again.