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While going to work or school in the darkness would kind of a drag, I wonder if it would reduce carbon emissions to go to year round daylight savings time ? 🌅
Right now, power demand is very low in early morning hours, but there is a lot of generation, especially from wind coming on top of all the base-load plants that can’t be shutdown when demand is low. An earlier start would mean that people would be turning their lights on earlier and ramping up heating and air conditioning earlier in the morning, when there is typically more of a surplus of electricity on the grid, especially in areas with a lot of wind power. It might be a good way to tame the evening ramp, when they most have to fire up the really dirty power plants to meet demand.
In 1974, they implemented national year-round daylight savings time. They weren’t wrong with year round daylight savings time when it came to regions with energy shortages in 1970s — at least from an energy conservation perspective. Maybe the 1965 black out wouldn’t have occurred, had it still been daylight savings time — and grid not heavily loaded when things started to go wildly out of control.
The 1965 black out occurred at 5:16 PM, at the peak of rush hour. It was a cold November evening, and with the time change, people had turned on their lights across New York, cranked up their electric heat, and the subways were going full-blast, all loading grid heavily compared to a few hours earlier. Had the sun still been out at 5:16 PM, the lighting load and heating load would have been a fair bit lower and fewer subway cars running, especially back then when more people worked 9-5 PM.
But it sure would make winter mornings very dark.