Daylight Savings Time starts early this year. Starting tomorrow we'll be going through our daily routine one hour earlier in an effort to benefit the most from an early sunrise. The rationale behind daylight saving time is simple: as the days become longer and the sun rises earlier, most of us end up sleeping through at least an hour of daylight. So if we were to wake up an hour earlier, many of us wouldn't even notice the difference as it would be still past sunrise. But then, as we start our day an hour earlier, we manage to get more things done before dark and we end up turning the lights off an hour earlier as we go to bed. Net savings: 1 hour of electric lights per family.
That's all. Remember, shifting our clocks doesn't reduce the amount of time we use computers or watch TV. It has no effect on the offices where lights are on 24/7, let alone the industries where machines consume much more energy than light bulbs. We are talking only about lights at people's houses which would be on one hour less. A 60-watt light bulb per person or so. But even that amounts to nearly 2 million kilowatt-hours saved each day or about 400 million KWh saved in Canada during the daylight saving time season. It may be a fraction of a percent compared to the total electricity consumption in Canada (which is 522 billion KWh). But that's enough to supply some 30,000 households with power year round. Therefore it's worth the trouble.
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