Daylight saving time started in Europe this weekend

Daylight saving time started in Europe this weekend

I woke up on Sunday morning and my videorecorder displayed 9:35, which was for 1 hour more than other clocks at my home. Summer time is here! Well, looking out from the window, I realized that, despite the Directive of the European Parliament on summer-time, the summer didn't come yet. It was raining. Good excuse to spent a morning on the Internet to look for more details about summer/daylight saving time (DST).

What is the time in other Sun Campuses?

• Europe agreed to observe a "summer-time period" from the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October, so all European engineering campuses are on the same page.
• Neither India nor China observes DST. When I chat with Sin-Yaw, VP Site Leader for Engineering Center in China, he told me that China spans five timezones anyway, so why they should bother with daylight saving ;-)
  
• California, as well as most of US states, will switch to daylight saving a week later (first Sunday in April). There will be 10 hours difference between campuses in Bay Area and Prague, only this week, compared to regular 9 hours difference.
  

Example for this week (MAR-27):
9:00 [am] Monday in Bay Area is
18:00 in Dublin
19:00 in Prague, Grenoble
21:00 in Petersburg
22:30 in India
01:00 [am] TUESDAY - in China

Example for next week (APR-3):
9:00 [am] Monday in Bay Area is
17:00 in Dublin
18:00 in Prague, Grenoble
20:00 in Petersburg
21:30 in India
00:00 [midnight] in China

Here is a nice timezone converter that includes meeting planner, if you want to find suitable time for your call in more geos.

Does it really have savings effect?

Daylight saving was adopted during the First World War and eventhough the idea came from  William Willet [UK], it was first introduced in Germany. I understand that in these war times, the most of the power energy was spent by lights and energy at home or at the factory, but I have some doubts that it really saves significant energy now. On the other hand, I can spend more time on biking with my young son during summer, as the sunset comes later.
It's interesting to see that something that's a common practice in Europe doesn't have a big effect in countries that  has enough daylight anyway. Even in the US!  Arizona and Hawaii do not observe DST.

Experiment in the US

One could expects that the daylight saving is a done deal and it's settled up already, but there is going to be an experiment in whole country, starting from 2007. DST in the US will start on the second Sunday in March 2007 and change back on the first Sunday in November. The US Department of  Energy is going to evaluate the impact of the daylight saving extension after that. Congress has right to revert back to current daylight saving schedule, if it can't be proved that there is a significant energy savings. Interesting. I wonder how all of this would be measured and how they reduce the impact of other things on this measurement.

Posted at 08:39PM Mar 27, 2006 by Pavel Suk in Global Engineering  |  Comments[4]