Daylight Saving Change Saved No Power 766
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."
Fine by me... (Score:5, Interesting)
While I had no doubts in my mind that this wouldn't save a dime, I'm still pleased with the fact that because I work 9:30 to 6pm I see daylight on my drive home three weeks earlier than usual. 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?)
Fuel Usage (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Quit'cher Bitchin' (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I like the extra daylight though (Score:2, Interesting)
Extra daylight in the FRIGGING DESERT is NOT helpful. People don't come out until after 7pm even in normal time. Want the cafes and outdoor busineses to stay closed until 1030pm, or do you want them to waste more water with those evaporative coolers (garden misters) trying to keep the locals from passing out outdoors? Until nightfall they're all sucking every last watt out of their homes barricaded inside on air-conditioned life-support! Cool evenings save energy. The sooner it arrives the better, and less energy and water is used as a result. And don't get me started on heat islands!
It's not 59-90f degrees everywhere in the USA ya know.
Re:Quit'cher Bitchin' (Score:5, Interesting)
I've checked Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], and I didn't see much of any countries that have followed the USA on this initiative other than Canada. Even Mexico didn't follow (assuming the ariticle is accurate).
I live in Canada, and I can tell you that we followed out of economic necessity, and no other reason. Our economy is so tied to America (in terms of cross-border business) that we realistically had no choice. But we certainly don't like it, especially those further north: with the pushing of the clock so much earlier this year, people were heading to work and kids were walking to school in pitch-black darkness again.
And, of course, we had the same PITA tech issues with the time change the Americans had. For Canadians in general, the negatives of this change outweighed the positive by a long shot.
Re:alternatively... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:alternatively... (Score:3, Interesting)
Do something for the environment today; put as many of your workers as possible on flexitime. You're also likely to end up with a happier workforce, if they spend less time getting to and from work every morning.
Re:It would mean REMOVING patches in Firmware (Score:3, Interesting)
There is a lot of firmware that has not been patched or acknowledged due to low priority.
I have a Linksys wireless router. Due to the difficulty getting kids offline to get ready for bed, I use the scheduler in the router to drop the connection. No nagging, begging for 5 minutes more 30 minutes later, etc.
A week before the time change, I downloaded the latest firmware update and installed it.
The changelog made no mention of the DST change so I checked the router Monday morning. It did not update. I have turned off DST in the router and changed the time zone one zone to the East to put it manualy into Daylight Savings. In the fall, I will have to remember to manualy move it back to the correct time zone.
Un-patching this router is simply a matter of setting the time zone back and turning DST on.
How much un-patched firmware is there?
Re:Change your schedule, not my clock (Score:3, Interesting)
No you have to either move everything back one hour or nothing, and then you end up with daylight saving time anyway except instead of a simple change of clocks, you have to change every scedule in the country.
Anyway some advantages of DST are more suptle, I know that the tourism industry here in Denmark likes it because it extend the season for outdoors atractions a month, because its light for a longer time in the evening.
Re:Amen (Score:5, Interesting)
Then you haven't thought about it much.
Early to bed, early to rise. School schedules reflected our agricultural heritage, which is often why summers are off, still.
"It has been shown that teenagers naturally wake up later in the day, and that elementary school students wake up earlier."
These are more recent studies, like in the last 10 years or so. Once schedules are set, things are hard to change, as there is a certain expectation.
"Yet it is the elementary schools that start at 8:30 and the high schools that start at 7:30. Why not make school like work, where it runs 9-5, on a schedule more matching that of the parents?"
Obviously you haven't worked a hard day in your life. 9-5 is more white collar. Blue collar traditionally was 7-3 for 1st shift. 2nd shift was 3-11pm. For example, where I am, the white collar rush time in the morning is heaviest at about 8:30am. However, most of my neighbors are out the door before 7, and the dump trucks start their banging 10 minutes after 7.
"Some will counter that high school students have jobs in the evening, so let them start earlier. Why should jobs drive school schedules?"
Your older student can take care of themselves if they arrive home around 2.5-3pm. The 2nd grader can be met at 3:15-3:30 by the parent that got off work. Or if the elementary school student has an older sibling, watched by them since the latter got home first. Or, without an older sibling, something that used to be done was that you hired a short watch babysitter, usually a high schooler. Most parents are concerned with what happens after school.
A high schooler can drop off his elementary school sibling, or the white collar see the same off on the way to work. The blue collar with the elementary aged child usually had a stay at home wife, or she worked a more service or white collar job and could see the child off later.
As well, most elementary school students usually don't have after school activities, like theater, marching band, or sports. This gives high school students who want to do those activities time to do them, and still make it home for the family dinner. If they started later, you wouldn't have a nice family meal, since they, as you were earlier quoting studies, are a good thing according to most studies.
And yes, jobs do matter. A lot. High school usually lets out by 2:45. This allows high schoolers to hit the 2nd shift if blue collar (3-11), or the 2nd shift if they work in the service industry like fast food (depends, but usually 2.5-3.5pm to closing which is typically 9-10). Doesn't sound like a big deal to you, if mommy and daddy paid for your toys and food, but for a lot of on the edge students, if you can't have an afternoon job, they would drop out. At least this allows those interested in sports to partake, as well as those who need the jobs or the training to also get it while still in high school.
btw, those sleep studies I don't think accurately accounted for natural light variances, in which case daylight savings actually works against how the teen mind would prefer.
Throwing it out doesn't cost much at all. (Score:5, Interesting)
Getting rid of it altogether requires far less IT effort than moving it. Most systems can just be configured to run on standard rather than auto-daylight time. The rest you can just strip it out - much easier than putting it in or tweaking it every time the legislature gets another hive of bees in their bonnets.
Staying with DST means a major ongoing hassle for any new scheduling application. Do you have any IDEA what a pain it is to program those with DST changes? *I* do: I had to do it for a client. What do you do with the 25 hour day - especially the hour that happens twice? What do you do with the 23 hour day?
I hear the railroads handle it like this:
- In the spring all the trains are suddenly an hour late, and try to make up the time over the next day.
- In the fall they actually STOP them and let them SIT for an hour.
I hear the worst day for commuter traffic deaths is the first Monday of DST. (It's rush hour with ALL the drivers jet-lagged simultaneously.)
Re:But...but.. (Score:2, Interesting)
http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifean22 [microsoft.com]
If you still had a Windows 2000 server on your network you had to either buy new software and give microsoft your money or pay $4000 to buy the DST hotfixes. Ironically leading up to change and for atleast one week afterwords you had to pay the $4000 fee to receive the hot fix. Now 3 weeks later they offer you a free manual update utility or the option to buy the $4000 hotfix. *The free manual utility was NOT available when everyone was rushing to update their older servers* Links to the old tech bulletin that only offered the pay for hotfix is no longer valid.
So out of curriosity, how much money did Microsoft make off the daylight savings change?
Re:Prior experience (Score:4, Interesting)
And this year the candy companies hit the holy grail. An hour more light for halloween, and trick-or-treating.
Re:Are you high? (Score:3, Interesting)
Took this opportunity to change our clocks to GMT (Score:5, Interesting)
* Systems that dual-boot windows and linux no longer make oopses with DST transitions
* our company does more and more projects across different timezones across the country and internationally, and it gets real confusing real fast to have everything in Eastern, Pacific, Arizona (they don't observe DST), Melbourne, and the UK.
* we're an aviation company, so most of us are already used to it
* most of our computers are on closed networks anyway
So Congress is really doing us a favor by driving us towards a global economy with a common accessible timebase already established for maritime and aviation uses. Even if that's not what they intended
Re:Fine by me... (Score:3, Interesting)
Really, I couldn't be more pleased.
Re:Who cares, it was brighter! (Score:1, Interesting)
This time around a lot of people THINK they know why this went on. If you really want to know, there were three groups lobbying for the time change..none of which had anything to do with energy savings. The three groups were an association of golf course owners, the BBQ industry and the candy making industry. (This is NOT a joke). The golf people wanted more people to go golfing for more of the year so they could make more profit. Moving DST up three weeks makes them a pile of money because people can have a round of golf after work for 3 more weeks. The BBQ industry also figured more people would grill out since it would still be light when people got home from work. They too will make a pile of extra money. The third group, the candy making industry, got them to shift the beginning by 3 weeks instead of 4 and the end by 1 week so that halloween weekend will still have DST, therefore more folks will have their kids out trick or treating so they will make a bigger pile of cash.
I think we should set it back to what it was regardless of the cost of unpatching/repatching things..there are a lot of systems out there that for a wide variety of reasons could not be patched and other types of systems out there that have no mechanisom to patch them anyway.
Strictly about the money (Score:4, Interesting)
Add to the fray the changing from winter to summer mix (and back at the end of DST) and you have a recipe for charging more for oil. Anyone have gasoline over $3 a gallon where they are right now? And all this BEFORE the Iran conflict with England. The oil companies switch mixtures and "clean" their tanks in the process, every March and every fall. March prices rise through April due to "less supply" but the same demand. The reality is the gasoline goes through at the same rate. It's all supply/demand *on paper.*
September brings Labor Day and "increased travel" for that holiday in the US, but prices CONTINUE to rise after that, due to switching the mix again. Add to that more shopping (more daylight DOES mean more shopping) and lo and behold it's all about the money. What else can we expect from a government that lets the President veto bills from the House and Senate because he wants to keep the Iraq war going, when less than 19% of the US supports the war? Definfitely fed up - but this move is STRICTLY over money.