Search Results for: "daylight saving"

Found 22 search results for "daylight saving" (this is page 1 of 3).

Daylight Saving Time for Electricity

Today (or maybe tomorrow? I’m still not sure) is the day that the hours change for those of us on Duke Energy Progress’s Time Of Use (TOU) electric billing plans. When you’re a grid-tied solar electricity provider like we are, Duke puts you on a TOU plan so that you are encouraged to use most of your electricity off-peak. The change in electric season is like Daylight Saving Time for our electric bills.

Peak hours in winter are from 6 AM to 1 PM and from 4 PM to 9 PM. Summer peak hours are from 10 AM to 9 PM. This means we can run our dryer or charge our electric car in the morning, rather than hold off until after 9 PM, which is a good thing.

I made a handy chart to help keep track of these schedules but haven’t shared it yet since I want to incorporate suggestions that Kelly made. Hopefully I’ll get it posted soon.

Who Really Benefits from Daylight Saving Time? – The Takeaway

Most Americans will "spring forward" this weekend and lose an hour to daylight saving time. But daylight savings is hardly standardized in the United States, much less the world: Both Hawaii and Arizona will stick with standard time on Sunday, and Europe won’t spring forward until March 30th. Few other countries practice daylight savings at all.

Michael Downing, a lecturer at Tufts University and author of the book "Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time," started wondering about the history and purpose of daylight savings a few years ago. He began to research the phenomenon and realized that most of the justifications for the practice that he remembered had very little to do with its existence.

via Who Really Benefits from Daylight Saving Time? – The Takeaway.

How Daylight Saving Time is worse than jet lag

I tried to keep my mouth shut this year about Daylight Saving Time. I really did. I was content to let my friend Damon Circosta take point on this as he likes to do, but I found I could hold out any longer. I’ve heard Kelly relate too many tales of office brain-dead-iness (also know as the Daylight Saving Time Fog) this week not to think this cause deserved another rant.

I used to enjoy comparing Daylight Saving Time to jet lag. After a few mornings spent awakening from unsatisfying nights of sleep, it occurred to me that Daylight Saving Time is actually worse than jet lag.

When you fly to a different time zone your body needs to adjust to local time. It does this through environmental clues, i.e. “the sun comes up later here so therefore I need to wake up later.” For instance in both Raleigh and Los Angeles, the local time at sunrise is around 7 AM and when you’re in either one the clock mostly matches the sun. However, when we reset our clocks without “resetting the sun,” none of the accompanying environmental clues are present to help reset our internal circadian clocks. It’s no longer 7 AM when the sun rises.

The result is a confused body and mind that struggle to reconcile this time fiction with what they are actually experiencing in the environment. Thus, Daylight Saving Time is actually worse than jet lag.

in Rant | 240 Words

Meeting Daylight Saving Time half-way

Clock Radio

Clock Radio

Since I am not yet Dictator of America and unable to dispatch with this silly notion of Daylight Saving Time, I have decided to meet the time-switch halfway. I will change all of my clocks to Standard Time again but will adjust my bedtime/waking time by a half-hour. Rather than awakening an hour later than I did during the summer, I’m waking only a half-hour later. Bedtime comes a just a half-hour earlier, too, rather than a whole hour. My daily routine in-between matches that of the rest of the world.

To summarize:

EDT wake time: 5:30 AM -> EST wake time: 5:00 AM
EDT bedtime: 10:30 PM -> EST bedtime: 10:00 PM.

This is the same routine I did a few years ago. We’ll see how long I choose to keep it up.

Daylight Saving Time Is Terrible: Here’s a Simple Plan to Fix It

Interesting take on DST. While I agree that DST is a bad, bad idea, I think the solution offered here is equally dumb, if not more so.

I believe local time should be coordinated as closely as possible to solar time. That’s how our bodies’ circadian clocks work. Trying to squeeze everyone into two time zones simply for convenience’s sake (and ignoring solar time) is stupid.

Daylight saving time ends Nov. 3, setting off an annual ritual where Americans who don’t live in Arizona or Hawaii and residents of 78 other countries including Canada but not Saskatchewan, most of Europe, Australia and New Zealand turn their clocks back one hour. It’s a controversial practice that became popular in the 1970s with the intent of conserving energy. The fall time change feels particularly hard because we lose another hour of evening daylight, just as the days grow shorter. It also creates confusion because countries that observe daylight saving change their clocks on different days.

It would seem to be more efficient to do away with the practice altogether. The actual energy savings are minimal, if they exist at all. Frequent and uncoordinated time changes cause confusion, undermining economic efficiency. There’s evidence that regularly changing sleep cycles, associated with daylight saving, lowers productivity and increases heart attacks. Being out of sync with European time changes was projected to cost the airline industry $147 million a year in travel disruptions. But I propose we not only end Daylight Saving, but also take it one step further.

via Daylight Saving Time Is Terrible: Here’s a Simple Plan to Fix It – Allison Schrager – The Atlantic.

The Daylight Saving Time Fog

I was on the agenda for yesterday’s City Council meeting. Lately I’ve been done with these in about an hour. This session had a few more detailed items for discussion, however, and I waited in the audience long enough that I began to lose focus.

It seemed like I wasn’t the only one with this affliction. Maybe I was seeing things through sleepy eyes but to me the whole room seemed remarkably devoid of energy.

An amusing parade then began at the Council table. City Attorney Tom McCormick, a man who usually stays glued to his seat lest the Councilors get themselves into legal hot water while unsupervised, quietly stepped away from the table and out of the room, returning after a few minutes. I’m not sure why Tom stepped away, obviously, but I do know that it’s very rare for him to do so.
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How to survive the daylight saving time switch – Calgary – CBC News

Today, the original purpose of daylight saving time — maximizing the amount of light during waking hours —still holds true. But more studies are popping up suggesting that people who are already susceptible to certain health problems, such as high blood pressure and depression, will feel the effects even more when the clocks move forward.

A Swedish study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2008 found the risk of a heart attack increases in the days right after the daylight saving time change.

via How to survive the daylight saving time switch – Calgary – CBC News.

Daylight saving time experiment

This winter I thought I’d try something new: a somewhat altered Daylight Saving time change. The goal is to minimize the impact of the time switch.

My idea is to switch clocks like everyone else but adjust my waking schedule by only 30 minutes, not the full hour. So as I currently wake at 5:45 AM EDT, I will awaken at 5:15 AM EST after the time change. Thus I’ll be waking up effectively 30 minutes later than I do now but the rest of my schedule will match others.

If I were brave I would continue to wake and sleep at the same time I do now but I’m not yet ready to take that on! We’ll see how a half-hour difference goes first.

Raleigh led the way on daylight saving time

Think Raleigh flubbed the recent disposal ban? That was nothing compared to the controversy Raleigh had in May 1932.

According to David Prerau’s book Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time, in May 1932 Raleigh became one of the few Southern cities to adopt Daylight Saving Time. Like a lot of decisions both past and present, the city held a public hearing when it began studying the matter. The meeting was packed with DST supporters, many of whom touted the recreational benefits of the time change. Local businesses got behind the plan, and shortly afterward city commissioners overwhelmingly approved the move to DST. On May 1, 1932, less than two days after the vote, Raleigh moved its clocks ahead for the very first time.
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