DST: Your How To Vote Card

[ataxi]

My home state of Western Australia is having this ridiculous referendum on the introduction of Daylight Savings Time on Saturday. I say "ridiculous" because in WA this issue has assumed an importance far beyond that which it rightly deserves

Comments

[anxiolytic]

The trial had bipartisan support, and if I remember correctly, was suggested by someone in the Liberal party. Labor were too scared to do it on their own.

One great thing about the trial is that is softened people up for extended trading hours.

[ataxi]

It doesn't really matter as far as the "oh we shouldn't have this bloody referendum because we've had one before" argument is concerned.

I'm in favour of extended trading hours as well, but that's just another issue for the individual conscience. I don't think small business needs the protection - in my opinion it'd be good for some, bad for others, but either way they have to be able to stand on their own two feet under market conditions - but small business owners will understandably disagree.

I do find it a fucking pain in the neck that most major supermarkets are still shut on Sunday in WA.

[zharradan]

Market conditions are as we make them..

Also, sorry about a snarky reply I made to another post of yours. I saw you had a good response and intended to pick up the thread seriously, but I forgot. Also I have forgotten what it was about, just that it happened.

[ataxi]

I agree, so I suppose in this case I'm arguing that market conditions should be changed to benefit consumers, potentially to the detriment of some business owners.

Re snark, if I had a dollar for every time I've done that. De nada.

[dannipenguin]

Thanks to the existence of the 3 year trial, there now exists some data on energy use.

Advocates of DST have said that it reduces energy use, citing a study from the 1970s in the US, where energy use did decrease slightly. Critics have pointed to a Western Power study which found a 0.6% increase in consumption due to DST.

It doesn't sound that bad. However, if the summer-draw of the south-west interconnected energy grid is around 3GW, this amounts to 18MW of extra power throughout the day. In reality though, the power draw is all on the afternoon shoulder, thus for that period is quite a bit higher and requires bringing more environmentally-costly peak power generation online for the peak (i.e. peak-load gas turbines).

These systems don't reach the same efficiency as baseload systems. They have to be brought online far in advance in order to have time to synchronise them to the grid.

[ataxi]

Hmm, I've actually had that study put to me before, perhaps it was on #ucc. Can't recall.

I'd like to see the methodology used, as they would have had to adjust usage statistics against a huge range of factors, and I wonder whether they did in fact account properly for a generally increasing rate of use of electricity.

If the stats are to be believed, then increased use of cooling systems due to getting home during a hotter period of the day seems to me to be a plausible underlying factor. I would've expected that the use of other household appliances would remain the same.

I'm an advocate against air conditioning systems at the moment, or at least I'm in favour of methods of construction and ways of living that limit the need for them. I've never lived in a house with ducted AC, and I hope never to install AC where I currently live. It seems like a lazy luxury to me.

[zharradan]

Anecdotally, I used airconditioning more in the last couple of summers than I ever had before. At first I felt guilty about it but it turns out the bill is satisfyingly large so you feel like you've paid for it! Good thing it doesn't reflect the true cost.

[dannipenguin]

They concluded that the non-DST growth was 10%. I suppose they can look at the number of new connections over this period compared to previous non-DST summers and statistics relating to airconditioning takeup. You'd assume their modelling was pretty solid.

I agree that the extra hour of required cooling is what's to blame. It's a hotter hour too.

I also think that we have become too reliant on air-conditioning in our building design and that we should be designing houses where it's not required (why are people even allowed to build houses with no north-facing eves?).

I've often thought that tiered pricing would be a good solution to the problem: meter electricity from airconditioning separately at a higher rate. I'm not sure if this would just cause a spike in less efficient, portable airconditioning systems instead (I suppose you could tax the crap out of wall units based on the expected number of operating hours for the device), not sure...