Re: Oracle - DST 2007 heads up

In article <8b451$45d612c3$cef8887a$7523@xxxxxxxxxxxx>,
jfmezei.spamnot@xxxxxxxxxxxxx says...
Bill Gunshannon wrote:
daylight window. What difference does it make if ou burn candles in the
morning or in the evening? Actually, they would have burned them at both
ends of their rather long day.


Lets take the scenario where DST would be in effect all year long. You'd
shift darkness from evening to morning. In winter, for northern latitudes,
it would make 0 difference since you'd wake up in darkness and cook your
dinner in darkness.

But for people who live further south, there may be cases where shifting
light to eveing might result in people cooking the evening meal in light
instead of dark. And this results in reduction of peak electricity demand.

Also, I had hear once that electric utilities can tell if it is sunny or
cloudy in the day by looking at electric consumption of offices. When it is
cloudy, supposeldy people turn on additional lights in their offices. (desk
lamps etc).

So, if by shifting time, you get light until after 17:00, it might really
result in reduction of power consumption in offices. (theoretically).

In practice, this silly time change will cause aonly trouble and no
advantage because it is done at time of year when days are already long
enough that the time change makes no difference. In fact, it may worsen
things because people will now need to turn on lights in the morning.

DST isn't done for its benefit when the days are short (winter.) It is
done for its benefit when the days are long (summer.)


Interestingly, down under in australia, it seems that peak electrical
demand is in the morning while people take showers, turn on air
conditioners and cook breakfast. In north america, it is for the evening meal.

Most of Australia is closer to the equator (lower latitude) than most
of the US. Day length is less extreme closer to the equator (at the
equator, days are always 12 hours long any time of the year), so DST
is less significant there.

It is much warmer in the evening than in the morning, so I would
expect A/C load to be much higher then. (Peak is probably about
2-3 PM local solar time.)

----

The idea is to match daylight hours to the hours when people are up
and about. Either convince people to get up earlier in the morning
during the times when the days are longer, which doesn't work very
well when people need to co-ordinate their schedules (factories,
stores or support desks where you need to cover all the shifts with
no gaps), or you game the clocks twice a year. Gaming the clocks
works better because everyone does it at the same time.

People could just wake up at sun rise every day, sleeping later in
the winter (and going to bed later in the winter), and getting up
earlier in the summer. If you live far enough north (or south, but
this applies only to researchers in Antarctica and fishing boat
crews), you still have to sleep in daylight part of the year, no
matter what schedule you keep, but that doesn't affect that many
people or places. The big problem with this is for people who
have fixed working hours. Also, many people are *NOT* morning
people, and would hate this, and hate anyone who proposed such
a thing, evil smiling b*****ds, happy in the morning. :-(

BTW, days are getting distinctly longer now than they were a few
weeks ago. Here in the Boston area, it is still light out until
almost 5:30 PM, it was totally dark at 4:15 in mid December. The Sun
is rising about 45 minutes earlier in the morning, too.

--
John
.

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