New Daylight Saving Did Not Save Power

**NcSchu** · 04-03-2007, 06:44 PM

I thought some people would be interested in this as the change seemed to cause a sort of mini-Y2K annoyance around the United States.

The US government's plan to boost energy savings by moving Daylight Saving Time forward by three weeks was apparently a waste of time and effort, as the technological foibles Americans experienced failed to give way to any measurable energy savings.

While the change caused no major infrastructure problems in the country, plenty of electronics and computer systems that were designed with the original DST switchover date (first Sunday in April) failed to update. The inconvenience was minor, and the potential savings were great. Or so we were told by the politicians behind the move.

As it turns out, the US Department of Energy (and almost everyone else except members of Congress) was correct when they predicted that there would be little energy savings. This echoed concerns voiced after a similar experiment was attempted in Australia. Critics pointed out a basic fact: the gains in the morning will be offset by the losses at night, and vice-versa, at both ends of the switch. That appears to be exactly what happened.

Full Article: The Daylight Saving change: no savings, no point

**wunaladreamin** · 04-03-2007, 07:42 PM

Belief is that the economy is the real reason for the change. Researchers believe that people are more likely to go out and shop while it's still light out. An extra hour of light translates to an extra amount of shoppers and shopping. Whether it's true or not, who knows?

**Mellyrose** · 04-03-2007, 08:13 PM

The inconvenience was minor

LIES.

The DST errors and f-ck ups we've been experiencing in my office (and from what I've heard from others) have been anything but minor. Our blackberries don't match our computer's calendars, meeting requests are being placed in the wrong timeslot, all day events are being carried onto the next day (because the computer recognizes it as an event from 1am-1am)....

My boss has missed and double booked meetings, etc. This is all after installing several DST patches on both his Treo and his computer. We're still trying to clean this up.

What a waste.