Time to Spring Ahead: Daylight Saving Time Begins Sunday

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 changed the duration of daylight saving from the second Sunday of March to the first Sunday in November.

Salem-News.com

(SALEM, Ore. ) - Most of the United States will be setting their clocks ahead as Daylight Saving Time begins at 2:00 a.m. on Sunday and then reverts to standard time on the first Sunday in November. DST is observed throughout the U.S. except for Arizona, Hawaii, and the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam and the Northern Marianas.

The prominent English builder and outdoorsman William Willett invented DST in 1905 during one of his pre-breakfast horseback rides, when he observed with dismay how many Londoners slept through the best part of a summer day. An avid golfer, he also disliked cutting short his round at dusk. His solution was to advance the clock during the summer months, a proposal he published two years later. He lobbied unsuccessfully for the proposal until his death in 1915.

Willett's 1907 proposal argued that DST increases opportunities for outdoor leisure activities during afternoon sunlight hours. Obviously it does not change the length of the day; the longer days nearer the summer solstice in high latitudes merely offer more room to shift apparent daylight from morning to evening so that early morning daylight is not wasted. DST is commonly not observed during most of winter, because its mornings are darker: workers may have no sunlit leisure time, and children may need to leave for school in the dark.

General agreement about the day's layout confers so many advantages that a standard DST schedule usually outranks ad hoc efforts to get up earlier, even for people who personally dislike the DST schedule. The advantages of coordination are so great that many people ignore whether DST is in effect by altering their nominal work schedules to coordinate with daylight, television broadcasts, or remote colleagues.

Daylight Saving Time was instituted in the United States during World War I in order to save energy for war production by taking advantage of the later hours of daylight between April and October. During World War II the federal government again required the states to observe the time change. Between the wars and after World War II, states and communities chose whether or not to observe Daylight Saving Time. In 1966, Congress passed the Uniform Time Act which standardized the length of Daylight Saving Time.

A 2007 study estimated that introducing DST to Japan would reduce household lighting energy consumption, 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.

DST may increase gasoline consumption: U.S. gasoline demand grew an extra 1% during the newly introduced DST in March 2007.

A 2007 study found that the earlier start to DST that year had little or no effect on electricity consumption in California.

A 2007 study estimated that winter daylight saving would prevent a 2% increase in average daily electricity consumption in Great Britain.

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.

Most of North America shifts at 2:00 a.m. local time, so its zones do not shift at the same time; for example, Mountain Time can be temporarily either zero or two hours ahead of Pacific Time.

Some information in this story courtesy of Wikipedia