Daylight saving dates change; energy conservation remains

Benjamin Franklin, while a minister to France, first suggested the idea of daylight saving time in an essay titled “An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light.”\nThat was in an essay was published in the Journal de Paris in April 1784. But it was more than a century before an Englishman, William Willett, suggested it again, in 1907.\nThis year, 2007, daylight saving time will begin on a new date: 2 a.m. on the second Sunday in March (March 11). Then, daylight saving will revert to standard time on a new date: 2 a.m. on the first Sunday in November (Nov. 4). This is the new pattern from now on:\n–DST begins the second Sunday in March.\n–DST ends the first Sunday in November.\nFor children, daylight saving may mean more time to play during the summer months. But one of the most significant reasons why we change our clocks to daylight saving time is that it saves energy.\nEnergy use and the demand for electricity for lighting homes is directly connected to when we go to bed and when we get up. Bedtime for most of us is late evening through the year. When we go to bed, we turn off the lights and TV.\nIn the average home, 25 percent of all the electricity we use is for lighting and small appliances, such as TVs, VCRs and stereos. A good percentage of energy consumption for lighting and appliances occurs in the evening when families are home. By moving the clock ahead one hour, we can cut the amount of electricity we consume each day.\nThere are those who hate daylight saving time. Frequent complaints are the inconvenience of changing many clocks and adjusting to a new sleep schedule. For most people, this is a mere nuisance, but some people with sleep disorders find this transition very difficult.\nSome people argue that the energy savings offered by DST are offset by the energy used by those living in warm climates to cool homes during summer afternoons and evenings. Similarly, the argument can be made that more evening hours of light encourage people to run errands and visit friends, thus consuming more gasoline.\nBut studies done in the 1970s by the U.S. Department of Transportation show that we trim the entire country’s electricity usage by about 1 percent every day during daylight saving time.\nMost people plan outdoor activities in the extra daylight hours. When we are not at home, we don’t turn on the appliances and lights. A poll done by the U.S. Department of Transportation indicated that Americans liked daylight saving time because there is more light in the evenings, and they can do more.\nThe latest change of dates for when we go onto and off daylight saving time may cause a bit of upset around your home, since there are many features in the home that we take for granted.\nProgramming your VCR, for example, may be a problem, especially if it has an automatic daylight-saving conversion feature. In fact, we are surrounded in our home by appliances that automatically convert from standard time to daylight saving time. This means you will have to manually change your clock on these appliances to daylight saving time, and then move them to the correct time once again when they catch up and automatically reset themselves.\nAll the experts agree that there is big money to be saved with DST as we know it – and tests have shown that observing DST year round would not save much. So, you can almost certainly be assured that you will be changing your clocks as often as ever.