Daylight Saving Wastes Energy, Study Says

[RedEarth]

Daylight Saving Wastes
Energy, Study Says
By JUSTIN LAHART
February 27, 2008; Page D1

For decades, conventional wisdom has held that daylight-saving time, which begins March 9, reduces energy use. But a unique situation in Indiana provides evidence challenging that view: Springing forward may actually waste energy.

Up until two years ago, only 15 of Indiana's 92 counties set their clocks an hour ahead in the spring and an hour back in the fall. The rest stayed on standard time all year, in part because farmers resisted the prospect of having to work an extra hour in the morning dark. But many residents came to hate falling in and out of sync with businesses and residents in neighboring states and prevailed upon the Indiana Legislature to put the entire state on daylight-saving time beginning in the spring of 2006.

Indiana's change of heart gave University of California-Santa Barbara economics professor Matthew Kotchen and Ph.D. student Laura Grant a unique way to see how the time shift affects energy use. Using more than seven million monthly meter readings from Duke Energy Corp., covering nearly all the households in southern Indiana for three years, they were able to compare energy consumption before and after counties began observing daylight-saving time. Readings from counties that had already adopted daylight-saving time provided a control group that helped them to adjust for changes in weather from one year to the next.

Their finding: Having the entire state switch to daylight-saving time each year, rather than stay on standard time, costs Indiana households an additional $8.6 million in electricity bills. They conclude that the reduced cost of lighting in afternoons during daylight-saving time is more than offset by the higher air-conditioning costs on hot afternoons and increased heating costs on cool mornings.

"I've never had a paper with such a clear and unambiguous finding as this," says Mr. Kotchen, who presented the paper at a National Bureau of Economic Research conference this month.

A 2007 study by economists Hendrik Wolff and Ryan Kellogg of the temporary extension of daylight-saving in two Australian territories for the 2000 Summer Olympics also suggested the clock change increases energy use.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB120406767043794825.html

[enlightenment]

1. HAH! Vindication is MINE!!

I have always hated Daylights Savings Time. Now I have a reason!!

[phantom power]

2. What a shame Congress wasn't aware of this result.

having just extended DST to "save energy."

:banghead:

[NMDemDist2]

3. I lived in AZ up until a year ago, we didn't do DST

it's weird to make the transitions

wish we'd stop it

[MBS]

9. yup

That was one of the best things for me about living in Arizona. Hawaii is still standard time, too.

[Delphinus]

21. I'm in Indiana

and this will be our second year doing the spring forward/fall back (extended by how many weeks this year?) and I absolutely HATE it! I try very, very hard to not ever hate something - but this sucks! It messes with my body.

I was, of course, very pleased to read some of that article this morning - nice, as the first responder said, to be vindicated.

[rusty quoin]

33. I'm in Indiana too, and I like it. I am not originally from here,

but from the East. I think it would be better if Indiana were on Central Time, then it wouldn't still be light, in the summer, after 9:00pm.

[kirby]

4. DST extension was a pillar of Bush's Energy Policy. LOL n/t

[phantom power]

6. And you know they won't repeal it.

Because that would make them look like the fucking imbeciles that they are.

[Aviation Pro]

5. Here's a solution....

...turn off the fucking AC. I hate air conditioning and from my perspective as a Floridian there is nothing more disgusting than walking into some room that is set to refrigerator settings. Yeah, I understand that people get uncomfortable at some certain point, but any AC that is set for anything lower than 80 F is simply pouring money into the local energy company's maw.

Time to toughen up buttercups, if our grandparents could bear it so can you.

[enlightenment]

14. I live in Las Vegas

Set the AC to 78 to keep the house at about 84. When it's 110+ outside. I'm pretty tough, but I'm not my grandparents and I don't have another lifetime to build up the tolerance. I've had heat stroke once (not exhaustion, but the minutes from death kind) and it buggered my thermostat for life, as far as I can tell. Now I get to add hot flashes and night sweats to the equation.

I appreciate your perspective, but I'm NOT turning the AC off. You'd read about the crazed rampage in the papers . . .

[kestrel91316]

18. It can reach 119 degrees here, and we see temps over 100 from

May through September and sometimes even through late November.

Sorry. I don't want to die, and I don't want my cats to die. And the law requires that I keep my vet clinic a safe temperature.

I keep my home at 85 in the summer. I'm not sacrificing any more until everyone else sets their thermostats at 85.

[Aviation Pro]

22. We....

...only reach the upper 90s where I live, but with two large bodies of water surrounding us the humidity makes it feel much higher. I understand heat and since I abhor forced air refrigeration, I use a generous number of fans and keep my thermostat set to 88 F. I also try to get as much time in the sea breeze as I can.

I still say, in the final analysis, toughen up.

[kestrel91316]

35. Toughen up?

You don't want to know my preferred response to you.

I'm not doing anything more with my thermostat until I see some evidence that the vast majority of Angelenos are doing the same as me. It's commonplace here to go into businesses in 100+ heat and they have the door standing open "for fresh air" while the AC roars full blast. And people do it in their homes, too. And in the winter I have seen the same with the heat on.

Other Americans are the problem WRT to heating/AC. NOT ME.

[ben_meyers]

23. Ya, and how about them furnaces up north!

Who needs heat.
Time to toughen up buttercups, if our grandparents could bear it so can you.

[Aviation Pro]

24. When I have to go to colder climes....

...I set the thermostat to 62 F and put on extra layers. Works like a charm (oh did I mention that my utility bill last month was ridiculously low - below $30).

Toughen up, save money and tell the oil companies eff you.

[Aviation Pro]

27. If you can dodge a wrench....

...you can dodge a ball.

[MBS]

7. YES!

Daylight savings time is the stupidest thing in the world.Very glad to see this

[itsrobert]

8. It was never about households saving energy

It was and is to benefit the business sector.

[shraby]

12. And more daylight

in the evenings so bigwigs can play golf after work.

[OKIsItJustMe]

19. The study addresses this actually

http://www2.bren.ucsb.edu/~kotchen/links/DSTpaper.pdf

Although we focus exclusively on residential electricity consumption, it is likely to be the portion of aggregate electricity demand that is most sensitive to DST. Changes in the timing of sunrise and sunset occur when people are more likely to be at home, where and when behavioral adjustments might occur. Commercial electricity demand, in contrast, is likely to be greatest at inframarginal times of the day and generally less variable to changes in the timing of daylight.

[fascisthunter]

10. Citizens are Cattle to Corporate America

must keep that "upper crust from ever having to work again.

[dflprincess]

11. I appear to be in the minority here

but I like having more daylight after I get home from work. Maybe we should just "spring ahead" and stay there.

[sharp_stick]

16. That's what I'd like to see too

I really like having the light in the evenings. Why we bother to change it twice a year always baffled me, I'd like to see it always stuck on DST.

[rusty quoin]

13. I wonder how much has to do with Indiana mostly being on E.S.T.,

when Indianapolis sunset is closer to states in the Central Time Zone, than those states in the East. If Indiana were to follow Daylight Savings, and use Central Time, I wonder if it would be better.

[angstlessk]

15. I recall in my youth when I was in charge of doing truck reports and made a suggestion

about getting the drivers to do something different...and was told it would be impossible my reply was..'you mean someone was able to convience almost the entire country to move their clocks ahead in the spring and back in the fall and we can't get a few truck drivers to fill out a form'?

I was looked at as if I was crazy???

[crikkett]

20. very funny!

[OKIsItJustMe]

17. Their "very preliminary" report is here.

It appears that DST might be helpful, if it didn't go on so long:
http://www2.bren.ucsb.edu/~kotchen/links/DSTpaper.pdf

We find that the overall DST effect on electricity consumption runs counter to conventional wisdom: DST results in an overall increase in residential electricity demand, and the effect is highly statistically significant. Based on two distinct identification strategies—a difference-in-differences approach for 2004-2005 and a natural experiment in 2006—we find estimates for the overall effect of DST that range from a 1-percent to a 4-percent increase in consumption. We also find that the effect is not constant throughout the DST period. There is some evidence of electricity savings during the spring, but the effect lessens, changes sign, and appears to cause the greatest increase in consumption near the end of the DST period in the fall. To help interpret these results, we simulate the effect of DST for an Indiana household with the U.S Department of Energy model for residential electricity demand (eQuest). Consistent with Benjamin Franklin’s original conjecture, DST is found to save on electricity used for illumination, but there are increases in electricity used for heating and cooling. Both the empirical and simulation results suggest that the latter effect is larger than the former. A final component of our analysis is calculation of the costs associated with DST. We find that the policy costs Indiana households an average of $3.19 per year in increased electricity bills, which aggregates to approximately $8.6 million over the entire state. We also calculate the social costs in terms of increased pollution emissions, and these estimates range from $1.6 to $5.3 million per year.

...

It also occurs to me that Spring days (April-June) are longer than Fall days (August-December) since the equinox solstice falls in June. (So, there's more daylight to be "saved" in the Spring.)

However, I keep harking back to a political cartoon from when Nixon tried abolishing "standard time." (It involved making a blanket longer by cutting a foot off one end, and sewing it onto the other.)

[stubtoe]

26. Ah, you answered my question.

Nixon years? Gads, that's even longer ago than I thought! My how time flies.

[OKIsItJustMe]

30. Yeah, it was Nixon - 1973

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/print.php?pid=4073

...

We have taken a number of actions to meet the energy crisis, and more will have to be taken. Many require inconvenience and sacrifice. But daylight saving time on a year-round basis, which will result in the conservation during the winter months of an estimated equivalent of 150,000 barrels of oil a day, will mean only a minimum of inconvenience and will involve equal participation by all. Unlike many of our other initiatives to deal with the energy crisis and to accomplish the goal of self-sufficiency in energy through Project Independence, these savings will not require research, new technology, diplomacy, or exploration.

...

[stubtoe]

25. Didn't we try a national switch to DST all year once, maybe oh 30 or so

years ago?

Do remember that it was a bad idea - kids were going to school in the dark on winter mornings. No one saved any energy.

I've always wondered why some people seem to think that DST magically puts an extra hour of daylight in the sky.

[RC]

29. Those idiots that think they actually gain an extra our are also the same idiots that think that

the sun rises actually and sets an hour later. People on a schedule for medical reasons, for instance diabetics, have a problem twice a year. Milk Cow don't know nor care what the clock says. They go by the sun and their own internal clocks.

The only good thing about this so called DST is I get lunch an hour earlier and get off work an hour earlier. There is no need to be changing our clocks to fool a lot of the people most of the time. Go to work earlier.

[mistertrickster]

28. Okay, fine, but that's Indiana, where summertime weather can be unusually cool.

How about in places like Kansas where I live now, where there's only three seasons--fall, winter and summer?

[Sancho]

31. I LOVE IT! I have always hated daylight savings time.

I wonder if Skinner will allow such a controversial post on DU! This must be a "conspiracy theory" AND a repub lurker for sure!


:dem: :dem: :dem: :dem: :dem:

[LiberalEsto]

32. I've always loved DST.

Having extra hours in the evening to work in the garden is wonderful. And my husband enjoys coming home from work and actually seeing daylight.

[kristopher]

34. I don't like the fact that this is limited to residential customers.

Add to that the fact that Indiana is not representative of the much more densely populated coastal areas, and you are left with an interesting study that is more thought provoking than useful in deciding the best national energy policy.

Disclosure: I like daylight into the late evenings.