Did you spring your clocks ahead last night/early this morning? I didn’t. I completely forgot. Not that all of my clocks needed springing ahead. Many of your energy vampires don’t need to be reset, because they automatically adjust for daylight savings time.
In this day and age, do we really need daylight savings time anymore? I know, that is the big debate every year that lasts all of one or two days, and then we forget about it.
I hate springing ahead. It totally fucks with my internals clocks.
Others feel it’s a jolt to the body to change its sleep clock twice a year, or causes needless confusion for a day as people figure out what time church starts and when their plane takes off.
It takes me about a week to adjust. It also bothers my birds. Because I’m off an hour, their whole schedule gets off by an hour. But, it’s not just the feeding schedule that upsets them, it’s the darker mornings as DST begins that throws them off. See birds don’t just rise at dawn, they actually rise when they see the pre-dawn ultraviolet rays. Now time changes aren’t going to effect wild birds, they go by their own internal clock.
DST was also supposed to help us save energy. But some studies are showing that we use more energy during DST. It’s not just using more power because DST was extended, though.
No federal rule mandates that states or even individual counties observe daylight saving time, so for years only 15 of Indiana’s 92 counties made the time switch. When the entire state adopted daylight saving time in spring 2006, Kotchen and colleague Laura Grant were able to observe changes in energy use in homes throughout southern Indiana over a three-year period.
Their finding was clear: The switch to daylight saving time cost Indiana homeowners dearly on their electric bills.
“Just in the state of Indiana, it turns out to be almost seven million dollars a year in increased residential electricity bills,” Kotchen said. “And that’s at a far lower price for electricity than the national average.”
The study found that daylight saving time did save on lighting use but that heating and air-conditioning use more than offset any gains.
But, researchers caution us that the higher use of energy my be different in various parts of the country. For instance northern states may benefit more from DST than do southern states where residents run their air conditioner more. An example is Vermont (note I chose Vermont for no particular reason).
Saint Johnsbury, in the northeast, has an average January temperature of about -8.1 C (about 17.5 F) and an average July temperature of about 20.8 C (about 69.5 F); Rutland, in the central part of the state, has a mean January temperature of about -5.8 C (about 21.5 F) and a mean July temperature of about 20.8 C (about 69.5‹ F).
Wow! Average July temperatures of about 70 degrees? I’d be in heaven. That’s springtime temps around here.
Perhaps, a more appropriate DST bill, that would actually save energy, should be based on longitude and latitude.
I too am not fond of losing an hour. I can’t fall asleep an hour earlier in the evening to make up for it. I also think of how much longer I keep the lights turned on in the morning during DST.
Carrie, I noticed last year that I was using more lights during the mornings. It didn’t make sense to me, to change when we start DST, then,