Daylight and Better Savings

The idea of “Daylight Saving Time” (DST) which has been fun for kids – in the summer – and grownups who like it to be light later, has been around for hundreds of years.

But I’ll bet you didn’t know that in 1784 Benjamin Franklin came up with this one too. Is there anything that man didn’t think up? He was the DaVinci of his age. And the Edison. And while his “discovery” of early morning light was part of a most amusing letter, the concept of a time change to take advantage of the different seasons of daylight was real.

But first Time itself had to be organized. Standard time and time zones weren’t established in the U.S. until 1883. This to make scheduling simpler for American and Canadian railroads, a practice already in place in Britain since 1840.

Ben Franklin’s idea of the saving of daylight came into actual use during World War I when Germany and Austria began the practice in April, 1916. The U.S. adopted the plan by ‘An Act to Preserve Daylight and Provide Standard Time for the United States” was passed in March, 1918.

Daylight Saving was used during the full years of World War II where it was called “wartime” instead of DST. But the inconsistent use of DST was corrected finally by The Uniform Time Act of 1966 (15 U.S. Code Section 260a) and since then has been consistently used throughout the country.

A recent minor adjustment of moving DST up by three weeks in the spring and one in the fall was meant to provide energy savings. This has raised a number of questions and serious doubts as to whether DST has any impact on energy use at all.

There are many arguments, pro and con, regarding the energy savings ascribed to DST. We will present these in a rather extended blog soon. Suffice it to say that there is a much more positive way to use the hours of the day to one’s energy cost advantage while helping the utilities maintain lower average consumption.

That little trick is called Time-of-Day or Time-of-Use rates now offered by most electric utilities. These provide lower rates for “off-peak” usage than for “on-peak.”

The definition of On- and Off- peaks vary by utility but in all cases leave night times and all Saturdays, Sundays and holidays as off-peak times. Call your utility for details. Or stay tuned.