Our Air Conditioners Devalue Daylight Savings

If we are not saving money why do we do it I guess some habits are hard to break.


Delaying the nominal time of sunset and sunrise reduces the use of artificial light in the evening and increases it in the morning. As Franklin's 1784 explanation pointed out, lighting costs are reduced if the evening reduction outweighs the morning increase, as in high-latitude summer when most people wake up well after sunrise. An early goal of DST was to reduce evening usage of incandescent lighting, formerly a primary use of electricity.[6] Although energy conservation remains an important goal,[24] studies are contradictory, and suggest that DST can increase energy use in some common cases:

The U.S. Dept. of Transportation (DOT) concluded in 1975 that DST might reduce the country's electricity usage by 1% during March and April,[25] but the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) reviewed the DOT study in 1976 and found no significant energy savings.[21]
In 2000 when parts of Australia began DST in late winter, overall electricity consumption did not decrease, but the morning peak load and prices increased.[26]
Although a 2007 study estimated that introducing DST to Japan would reduce household lighting energy consumption,[27] a 2007 simulation estimated that DST would increase overall energy use in Osaka residences by 0.13%, with a 0.02% decrease due to less lighting more than outweighed by a 0.15% increase due to extra cooling; neither study examined non-residential energy use.[28]
DST may increase gasoline consumption: U.S. gasoline demand grew an extra 1% during the newly introduced DST in March 2007.[29]
A 2007 study found that the earlier start to DST that year had little or no effect on electricity consumption in California.[30]
A 2007 study estimated that winter daylight saving would prevent a 2% increase in average daily electricity consumption in Great Britain.[31]
A 2008 study examined electricity billing data in Indiana before and after it adopted DST in 2006, and concluded that DST increased electricity consumption by 1% to 4%, primarily due to extra afternoon cooling.[7