Posted on 04/02/2007 4:46:13 PM PDT by Sub-Driver
Early U.S. Daylight Savings a bust in power savings Mon Apr 2, 2007 6:56PM EDT
By Lisa Lee
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The early onset of Daylight Savings Time in the United States this year may have been for naught.
The move to turn the clocks forward by an hour on March 11 rather than the usual early April date was mandated by the U.S. government as an energy-saving effort.
But other than forcing millions of drowsy American workers and school children into the dark, wintry weather three weeks early, the move appears to have had little impact on power usage.
"We haven't seen any measurable impact," said Jason Cuevas, spokesman for Southern Co., one of the nation's largest power companies, echoing comments from several large utilities.
That may come as no surprise to the Energy Department, which last year predicted only modest energy savings because the benefits of the later daylight hour would be offset.
For example, households may draw less electricity for lights at night, but will use more power in the early in the day as they wake to darker and chillier mornings.
Residential lighting comprises only about 10 percent of the average homeowner's electricity use, while air conditioners, heaters and refrigerators consume much more power. Washers, dryers and plasma televisions are also bigger users of electricity than lighting.
"There might have been a small increase in morning lighting, and a slightly larger decline in evening lighting usage," said a spokeswoman at New Jersey utility Public Service Enterprise Group Inc, but that modest decline will have no impact on its overall sales or earnings.
The U.S. Congress will evaluate the effects of the earlier switch to Daylight Saving Time.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
What? What updates? You go in and change the damn time..what’s so hard about that?
Yeah, mine is finally ok, just today. First I had to remember to subtract one hour, then last week, my son finally fixed it, only to have it jump ahead automatically this past Sunday ( the old date). I hate DST and I think they should repeal this law asap.
Or just add an hour until last Sunday at 3 am. All is well. I love DST.
they also forgot that most folks don’t care about ‘power savings’ but the extra hour of light in the evening—sorry early birds ;<)
Pretty foolish move although it makes sense in the fall for the trick-or-treaters.
I didn’t have to do anything with my MacIntosh! :-)
Besides that, I love the change! I wish they’d put Maine with the Maritimes timewise.
Actually there were at lot of system that needed to be updated. Microsoft did not issue it’s final patch until a couple weeks before the change.
Mowed the lawn after I got off work late and when I can get away from work at a decent time - golf!!!!!!!!!! So I love the early daylights saving time.
Usually when Congress gets involved things immediately improve.
What, you say you want me to prove that?
OK, just give me a minute...
chirp...chirp...
Get rid of DST altogether.
it’s about commerce, not energy savings and not about schoolkids waiting for their bus in the dark or getting home off their schoolbus in the dark whichever it is and we don’t have dark then anyway since it is already light 16 hours from 6 to 10, which was 5 to 9 in regular time.
I’m happy for you !
Sorry. I hope you are getting better.
Thanks, I am!
Several components were missed and we had service calls out the buttocks because recorders, cameras, motion sensors, etc... were either completely off line, or out of sync.
A prosecutor can loose a case if the time-stamp on the video feed is off.
What is your new tag?
But the New York city stock traders got another hour to trade with England. Oh I forgot, that was who were really pushing it in the first place.
I’m still stuck in Y2K.
Did Australia make it? What are closets filled with ham & lima beans going for on eBay?
Daylight savings time? Which year?
Thats Funny. I love DLS and hate EST. I would like to see it stay the way it is now year round. I like that extra hour in the evening.
Slip & Fall lawyers are already having wet dreams over this...
It’s about training the public to obey every inane little edict from the gov’t.
When DST was first introduced, it made a little sense, as the world was a 5 day workweek place.
Now we live in a 24/7/365 world. I cannot see any benefit to DST. If it means that much to you to have another hour of daylight, lobby your employer to start earlier. Don’t cause a huge spike in accidents and lost time due to overtired folks driving in on that first Monday.
Nenana Ice Classic. Scientific calculation.
Aside from the computer clock issue, I think many parts of the US has had terrible weather since the time change. I certainly have had my heat running 24/7 until just recently. No power savings here.
Congress is a bunch of idiots.
With DST one gets home to an extra hour of sunlight, but then the air conditioner has to go on an hour earlier.
I liked it before they tampered with it this year..
I drive to work every morning while it’s dark. I used to enjoy seeing my drive get lighter and lighter.
That didn’t happen this year.
The trees turned green and I never saw them because when I pulled into the parking lot it was still dark.
Same thing happened at our firm. The early time change drove our IT folks crazy.
We did the math on this just last week here at work. 74 servers running various applications, all of which had to be modified to change on the new date. As was pointed out by someone else, these systems must have coordinated dates to work properly. If System A says that Process X stopped at 8AM, while System B says it stopped at 9AM, the resulting discrepancy would cost our customers money. So we had to set up test environments, code the changes, try them in our test environments, confirm the changes to be bug free, and then bring everyone in a 1AM on a Sunday to pull the whole system offline to do the upgrades on our production servers. Once the migration was completed, we had to let the QA guys loose on the servers for hours to confirm that we were working properly with the patches. By the time labor and overtime were calculated in, this “cost saving” measure cost us about $30,000.
And now they tell us there are no savings? Figures. And yes, if they move it BACK to the previous date, we’ll have to do it all over again.
No thanks. The sun comes up way to early in the summer as it is. Without DST it would come up here at 4:53 am and set at 8:03 pm on June 21. NO thanks! Give me an extra hour at night and I don't want the sun in the house yet at 5 am.
You've nailed the basic problem with the Time Zones...they were created for the convenience of the railroads, which wanted one uniform time from Boston to nearly Chicago so that only one time change would be needed, just after departure or just prior to arrival at the windy city. The Eastern zone is simply too big...and its western boundary too far west. If the western boundary were at the OH/IN line, and parts of New England shifted to Atlantic there would be fewer cries for DST tinkering.
I’d like to see them contrast the supposed “savings” against accidents, sick time, lost productivity etc, that changing the time really causes.
You said — “What? What updates? You go in and change the damn time..what’s so hard about that?”
There are a lot of automated systems out there and the wrong time causes trouble. So, an automated changing of the time makes it all work right. Otherwise, there are problems.
I hear that the Windows systems didn’t get their upgrades until later. I understand that the Macintosh systems got their about a year early, although they did send out another notice to people to upgrade (if they had not already).
As far as what’s so hard about that, well, it would be nightmare with hundreds of computers (the ones we all depend upon).
Regards,
Star Traveler
I'd be willing to bet that our company alone burned more fuel accessing all the machines to update them than was saved throughout the nation. Stupid move Congress!
Does your scientific calculation include a global warming factor?
If only it was that easy.... I lost a few hours at work, trying to get Microsoft's DST patch to work. It only worked on about 80% of our machines. As a result, our data-sync routines were goofed up and we ended up babysitting stuff for 3 weeks. At our salaries, the cost was pretty high.
Awwww....#**!!?!&%##!!
Now, we’re going to have to go back two hours in the fall.
Multiply that by about 100 for my division. Also, people testing during the real DST change to make sure the fix stuck, and factor in the last minute Java bug that returned UT when you tried to get a datetime returned in a function and Exchange Calendar problems with recurring appointments. All-in-all we must have blown a small fortune on this change, only to have them possibly change it back in a year or two because... well just because.
I totally agree. Here in the Central valley of California it makes no sense. The hottest part of the day in the summer (usually 100+) is 5:00PM PDT. That is when everyone leaves work, and must get in cars and turn on max air-conditioning only to get home and turn down the air. Some saving.
For all you that love the extra hour at night, I have news for you, the days get longer whether or not we change the clock. Where I live it does not start to cool down until the sun sets. Why in the world would I want to wait until 10:00 PM for the cool down to start.
Last year my air-conditioning bills ran $600 per month for my little old house. Some savings!!! It would be much more efficient for me to be at work during the hottest part of the day, instead of in traffic.
Most computers maintain internal time as GMT. They have a set of tables for each timezone indicating whether daylight savings time is observed and the start/end date/time for that zone. The legislation required updating those tables. Some people were fortunate to have a supported operating system. Many were not. In addition to the simple time of day clock, there was a big hit to calendar tools and many database management systems that have private copies of the tables.
Move it 1/2 hour one way and leave it the hell alone. The rest of the world can fend for themselves.
Yep. My husband says each of his clients spent $15K and up for this stupid thing.
I beg to differ with you. My children have been waiting in the dark every morning for the last three weeks.
I applied the "patch" to my Windows Mobile 5.0 in the Samsung sch-i730. It immediately screwed up all my calendar entries. I fixed the calendar entries on March 11. When the old DST date arrived...all my calendar entries were screwed up again. The DST algorithm is buried in the calendar executable. It doesn't use the "system" DST settings.
I don’t care to see the sun rise at 600am either. Give me the time at night when I can enjoy it.
And all thse IT whiners about cost. Ok, how about next year?
My electric bill dropped by a third.
Was it due to DST being early?
You poor thing! I’m so sorry to hear how sick you’ve been. Prayers for you, mariabush. :)
Hey! I thought about you this afternoon while I was visiting with a friend and enjoying an iced mocha on our warm and sunny balcony. I thought about your “scientific calculation” when she and I were talking about the Nenana Ice Classic. Won’t you be upset if your calculation is right this year, and you didn’t get a ticket? Is it too late to buy one? I’m tempted to do just that, using your calculation, and give you a split of the winnings if it’s the right one. LOL
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