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22.
October
2015.
Big Data Refutes Daylight Saving Benefit

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

 

Burning the candle at both ends --- Big Data refutes Daylight Saving Benefit

 

European Startup 'kWIQly' finds Daylight Saving Time (DST) is not observed by many heating control systems. Results suggest waste approaches 1% of European Carbon Emissions, far exceeding putative benefits.

October 21, 2015

Consumers were literallyleft in the coldwhen 'Nest Labs' thermostats failed to account for DST changes earlier this year. Staff at Swiss startup 'kWIQly' (sic), realised more generally that DST benefits assume simplicity and observability. As heating control systems do not 'see' daylight, DST has scope to cause huge waste.

If proven a simple hypothesis (that DST for heating goes largely unobserved in commercial and public buildings), would justify axing DST, please farmers and enhance road safety when our children travel to school. It would simplify scheduling of transport and even save energy! Findings are illuminating:

Benjamin Franklin proposed DST to 'The Journal of Paris' (1784) in 'An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light'. He wrote of candles and tallow (candlewax) , but a burning candle is obvious and within arms reach and, if forgotten, it burns down --- limiting excess waste by tying all use to human activity. This is not true of boilers in large buildings (they do not 'go out' when we stop fuelling them as a wood fire once did).

Now, as CoP 21 convenes in Paris, data analytics can provide insights to help mitigate climate-change. Smart-meter (or their frequent energy readings) can be explored to check common-sense rules. One such rule is that patterns of daily gas use should shift forward and backward relative to wintertime with DST.

'The bad news is that DST is indeed far worse than useless', explained James Ferguson, CEO of kWIQly, 'automated controls switch things on early in summer, keep them on late in winter and fail to adjust between the two, extending periods of nominal occupancy by one hour'.

Results show (following evaluation of over 10,000 retail, office-space and residential european gas meters), that around 55% of buildings do nothing about DST. This implies a 10% of additional false occupancy given a 10 hour working day. In a further 4% of cases the shifts (that were made) involved turning timers back for Summer rather than forward requiring longer additional operational hours to achieve comfort. 10% of heating used in buildings is around 1% of global emissions.

Ferguson explained why the problem is so common; 'Building controls can adjust to DST as do our Android phones, PCs, car-clocks and so on, but engineers neither expect nor witness a DST change, so implementation does not happen and diligence tests (during building commissioning) overlook the problem.'

Ferguson went on to raise a political problem:

'As clearly as data enables research into controls and energy waste, a lack-lustre attitude to Smart-Meter roll-out prevents action. DST related waste at around 1% global energy is no more than a minor illustration of waste found in buildings. CoP21 participants know we must act fast --- but to act we need data, especially regarding gas. The resistance by many European Governments to Smart-Metering roll-out is premature and dreadfully ill-considered, while the clear potential benefits are not yet even fully explored.'

The key advantage of data analysis offers is that expert pattern-recognition scales well, being easily replicable and it can throw light on energy waste in ways too expensive to investigate by other means while also avoiding expensive exploratory site visits. Perhaps at CoP 21 in Paris efforts can be made to burn the midnight oil when it matters most.

Next DST change in Europe: Sunday, 25 October, 2015

END (593 words)

Contact: James Ferguson, kWIQly

james@kwiqly.com

Tel: +41 (0)33 849 10 86

Mob: +44 7500 960416 (James Ferguson)

Picture Note: Image files in pdf version available upon request.

 

EDITORS NOTES: DST History and Parisian context, CoP Paris

Benjamin Franklin wrote his provocative essay: 'An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light' in 1784 - suggesting Paris would do well to get out of bed earlier in the morning to make better use of daylight, and thus reduce reliance on candles (potential savings estimated by Franklin - 65,050,000 lbs tallow in Paris annually). He even proposed a capped trade solution. Cap and Trade remains a political hot potato regarding energy use - 'plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose'.

Proponents kept the idea alive (notably etymologist George Hudson in New Zealand and William Willet a British builder). Robert Pearce introduced a British 'Daylight Saving Bill' to Parliament in 1908 but Germany, during World War I first took the initiative introducing DST at 11 pm. on April the 30th 1916 to save energy for their war effort.

COP21 - United Nations Conference on Climate Change: Paris 30th November --- 11th December

NOTES:

kWIQly provides energy data analytic services to energy retailers in Europe.

Unusual capitalisation of the name kWIQly \textit{ (sic) } combines the notion of Power (kW) Intelligence(IQ), and speed

kWIQly GmbH., Untere Gasse 9, Niederried 3853, Bern, Switzerland

http://www.kwiqly.com/

kWIQly figures :

 

Caption / Explanation

File

Summer (red) advanced relative to winter

DST_active.jpeg

Summer (red) not advanced relative to winter

DST_inactive.jpeg

Summer (red) lags relative to winter

DST_reverse.jpeg

Analysis of gas consumption in 1500 public buildings; those falling below the diagonal do not honour DST

DST_overview.jpeg

 

[ Image gas.jpg : Source:http://ses.jrc.ec.europa.eu/smart-metering-deployment-european-union]