Seeing in the Dark

As anyone in the technology industries know, the cock-eyed change to Daylight Savings Time early this year caused all sorts of computer distress: patch releases for Windows that boogered up other applications, database issues with timestamps, etc. All in the name of "saving energy".

I've always been skeptical that this has any effect on energy consumption. So what if using lights later in the evening...we're just using them earlier in the mornign to make up for it. We no longer have the luxury of changing our schedules to match the sunrise-sunset, we still have to get up in the morning for work at 6:00 am, for example, and if it's dark outside, we're turning on the lights and turning up the heat.

But other than forcing millions of drowsy American workers and school children into the dark, wintry weather three weeks early, the move appears to have had little impact on power usage.

"We haven't seen any measurable impact," said Jason Cuevas, spokesman for Southern Co., one of the nation's largest power companies, echoing comments from several large utilities.

It's nice to have more hours in the evening that are light, and leave work in the daylight, but the whole "energy savings" things is a bust -- an opinion that most energy companies expressed last year when this whole thing was suggested.

I feel quite vindicated.