Life Between No Sock Summers
The other part of my life: teaching in a public school.
Nevertheless, there is surprisingly little evidence that D.S.T. actually saves energy. This paper takes advantage of a natural experiment in the state of Indiana to provide the first empirical estimates of D.S.T. effects on electricity consumption in the United States since the mid-1970’s.
Focusing on residential electricity demand, we conduct the first-ever study that uses micro-data on households to estimate an overall D.S.T. effect.The dataset consists of more than 7 million observations on monthly billing data for the vast majority of households in southern Indiana for three years.
Our main finding is that — contrary to the policy’s intent — D.S.T. increases residential electricity demand.
Estimates of the overall increase are approximately 1 percent, but we find that the effect is not constant throughout the D.S.T. period. D.S.T. causes the greatest increase in electricity consumption in the fall, when estimates range between 2 and 4 percent.
” - More Ammunition for People Who Hate Daylight Saving Time - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog