Read this short essay by one of the electrical engineer following this blog. Will Daylight Saving Time (DST) be finished soon? Here is his oopinion on the subject. You too tell us what you think in the comment area below.
Many people believe that with new improvement in low energy light producing (LEDs), the Daylight Saving Time (DST) would not be applied soon and would become an old-fashioned thing.
From our childhood, we remember that we have changed our time twice a year as daylight saving time. For Europeans and other places in the world, it happens once in the beginning of spring and next in the end of October. The main reason is to save energy and keep the lights off more.
This issue was invented by George Hudson from New Zealand in 1895 and it was implemented from the first years of 20th century in Europe and gradually developed in many countries, especially after the energy crises that occurred in 70’s decade.
But after a century, there are two new changes in human life style:
- One hundred years ago, the only source of light was Incandescent Lamps with 15 lumens/watt ratio. You had to spend too much energy to generate light and simultaneously produce too much heat that is unwanted. Actually this heat was the main element in energy loss. During this century, many new methods of heatless light generating were invented with less energy consuming and gradually, generating light become easier, cheaper and faster. For us, the common style is LED lights with 120 lumens/watt ratio and it seems to be excellent. However, this progress is not stopped.
- At the internet and social media era, the human activities are not only in daylight and many jobs, entertainments and activities might be done in any time of the day. You may receive any services 24/7 days. For some people, the place of day and night was replaced. We may predict that after some years, there would be no differences between day and night for human activities.
Lighting new generation
Let’s take a look in this revolution that happened in last 100 years. For many people Incandescent lamps is recognized with name of Thomas Edison, his efforts and his inventions.
Although, the Incandescent lamp was a revolution at its time, it generates light with current passing through a filament and simultaneously produces too much heat, which make it high energy consumer. It also had some other disadvantages like short lifespan, fragile and hard to transport.
After that, we had new other light generating methods like:
- Halogen lamps
- Fluorescent lamps with less power consumption and higher lifespan and consequently cheaper
- Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) or energy saving lights
- Finally, LED lamps that remarkably changed light industry in the last decade. These lamps had their own brief but wonderful history. Proudly, it can be said that they substituted the incandescent lamps completely. They have many advantages in comparison with old lamps like:
- High light generation
- Long lifespan
- Low energy consumption
- Heatless
- They are not fragile like the old ones
- Different colors
- They works with low voltage (AC & DC)
- You might have variable light output and they could be controlled or switched easily
Who knows what is coming next. It is not unexpected that we see new lamps with more efficiency soon.
Disputes on Daylight Saving Time
There are many disputes on DST that affects its energy saving aspect and made it inefficient today, for example:
- Some people argue that it is not adopted with human nature. It might harm the people behavior and especially morning and evening activities and might increase the heart attack risk. They persuade to return to our original life style.
- The entire world does not obey DST and different zones have their own DST. At the time that we are going to develop international relations, it makes affairs more complicated.
- DST exchange also has some costs and you may save them.
- DST does not affect using other electrical devices and it only saves energy in lighting that is not as important as before. In twenty first century, People demands are different. Although, energy saving is important, energy usage priority has been changed.
In contrary, others are accustomed with DST and insist on it. For example they say that we don’t want to send our children to school in darkness and many other issues like that.
However, it seems that we are in an intermediate era and in the near future we will expect to eliminate DST from our life. We will see!!!
Do you think that Daylight Saving Time would be finished soon? Let’s exchange in the comments section below.