Spring Forward
Yes, once again, it’s the dreaded Daylight Savings Time, which begins at 2:00 AM on Sunday. In honor of Del and my Dear Husband, both of whom hate DST, here’s an article from the Wall Street Journal highlighting a study that shows DST wastes energy.
Love it or hate it, don’t forget to set your clocks forward one hour tonight.
March 8th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
What kills me is, when our beneficent leaders introduced the expanded DST, it was supposed to be accompanied by a “study” to determine whether it actually saved money—the expanded hours, I presume, or maybe DST in general. So it’s been well over a year and I haven’t heard a peep about any such study. Maybe I should write my congressperson, huh?
March 8th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Oh, why didn’t I google first. Somebody HAS done a study, and no, it didn’t save a thing. Not in California, anyway.
“The extension of Daylight Saving Time (DST) to March 2007 had little or no effect on energy consumption in California, according to a statistical analysis. The most likely approximation is a 0.2% decrease during these three weeks. Given the natural variation in consumption, however, the margin of electricity use change associated with early DST could have been one and a half percent of increase or decrease without such effects showing up statistically. Formally, weather- and lighting-corrected savings from DST were estimated at 0.18% with a 95% confidence interval ranging from 1.5% savings to a 1.4% increase.”
March 8th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Del,
You are brilliant. And DST seriously sucks.