Daylight savings reminder

[elanjacobs]

WA and NT don't have daylight saving either

[doug3030]

I was just coming in to point that out too but Elan got here first

[Tweedle]

Why oh why won't logic prevail?????????????

Australia should have three time zones - East, Central, and West.
And then the whole country should either have daylight saving - or not - I don't care.

It should be a federal decision, it shouldn't be left up to the states.

[Mobyturns]

Can't have the curtains fading with all that sunlight.

[Simplicity]

It's because of war
I was told

[doug3030]

In Queensland, the problem arose during the reign of Sir Johannes "Joh" Bjelke-Petersen, KCMG, the longest-serving and longest-lived Premier of Queensland, holding office from 1968 to 1987.

Everyone acknowledged that the Sun actually did shine out of Joh"s @r$e, and nobody could expect a man of his stature to get out of bed an hour early for anything.

[Simplicity]

I was told by my in laws both in there 80s it was due to the war and the black out

[Fuzzie]

I think SEQ should move its timezone +1hr all year. At the moment first light is before 5 and official sunrise is 0520. In June sunrise is at 0630. In December sunrise is 0445.

[Uncle Al]

I'll be interested to see how much better my solar panels perform with the extra hour of daylight.

Alan...

[elanjacobs]

I still say it should be in winter when an extra hour of light at the end of the day would ACTUALLY make a useful difference.

[Chesand]

Why oh why won't logic prevail?????????????

Australia should have three time zones - East, Central, and West.
And then the whole country should either have daylight saving - or not - I don't care.

It should be a federal decision, it shouldn't be left up to the states.

That would too much like common sense and that isn't very common any more.

[crowie]

Personally IMHO daylight saving is a croc and I don't like it....
Four months was bad enough but for the mainland to give over to Tasmanian Governments desire to have six months...bar humbug....Queensland, West Australia & Northern Territory got is right; if you want more daylight GET UP EARLIER!!!
Burning the candle at both ends is not good....
Parents with kids trying to get them to bed at reasonable time have so much difficulty....
BUT then this is only the ravings of a crowie....

[jack tas]

cows gone of milking today, curtains have faded but hey at least my wooden boat project i got an extra hour of painting time, was dark by 6 yesterday

[RoyG]

Interesting discussion .....

Daylight Saving Time (DST) was originally conceived as a way of conserving energy consumption, with early implementations dating to the 1890s (http://www.timeanddate.com/time/dst/history.html). The theory was that by starting the waking day an hour early, DST would enable people to make better use of natural light in both the morning and in the evening, thus reducing the consumption of energy used by artificial lighting. When DST was implemented widely in the early 20th Century, artificial lighting was one of the largest consumers of electricity. During WW2, the UK Govt implemented Double DST, and there are papers available on the internet that document that the implementation of Double DST did free up more electricity generation capacity for use by war time industries - but the blackout and no street lights may have also impacted on the reduced electricity consumption.

However, in the 21st Century, Australia's use of electricity in the home and business environment has changed significantly. Most homes (especially those located in the hotter parts of Australia) have electricity hungry air conditioners, along with many other appliances that consume electricity, whilst the lighting load in our homes has reduced significantly due to the introduction of CFL and LED lighting.

So, in 2015, does having DST result in any reduction in energy consumption ? Probably not, as DST moves the hottest part of the day one hour further into the evening, meaning that we tend to run our air conditioners for longer in the evening.

My take on whether DST results in an energy consumption reduction in 2015 - No definitely not. You can find some comparative views regarding the Pros and Cons of DST at this address: http://www.timeanddate.com/time/dst/...ng-debate.html

There are other factors to consider in relation to DST implementation.

One consideration is Latitude. Countries located in far northern Latitudes (i.e. further north than 45 degrees North - e.g. London) seem to like DST. They don't get much sun in winter due to the quite short days, so for that reason they like to maximise the amount of daylight that they can utilise during the longer days during the summer months. Problems like sending children to bed when it's still daylight do not even occur to them, as they're quite used to twilight lighting at bedtime, regardless of DST being implemented or not.

Another consideration is where you live in relation to the centre of the time zone that governs you time. The Australian Eastern Standard Time-zone is centred around the 150 East Degrees Longitude, which runs just west of Sydney (almost through Katoomba), and in Queensland it runs through Chinchilla which is some 300 kilometres west of Brisbane.

In the southern parts of Australia (Tas, Vic, Southern SA, Southern WA, and Southern NSW) DST doesn't really effect life too much. You get used to still having daylight after 9:00pm in Melbourne in January. I lived through the DST trials in the 1971-2 and again in the 1989-92. In South East Queensland, DST, i my opinion, really didn't make that much difference. Because of the location of the 150 East Longitude is some 300 Km west of Brisbane, Brisbane experiences sunrise and sunset about 15 or 20 minutes before Sydney, so the effect of DST on Brisbane was minimal, especially when compared to to teh effect of DST on western VIC, Western NSW, and Western Queensland.

But if you live in Western Victoria, or Western NSW (excluding Broken Hill which lives in Adelaide time) then you probably also hate DST - because, you live year round with Sun rise and Sun set being about 60 minutes behind Sydney.

My personal belief is that DST as it is presently designed, has passed it's use-by date in Australia. What is more important is having adjacent geographic areas on common time zones in order to minimise economic losses due to the neighbouring town being on a different time zone. Areas that come to mind are Broken Hill, which has been on South Australian time for many years, because they do business with Adelaide on a day to day basic, more than they do business with Sydney. The Gold Coast and the Far North Coast of NSW, are two major tourism areas, separated by a line on a map, but during summer they're separated by an hour. Try running a business in that area when you have to service customers on both sides of the border. Those towns in in the western quarter of Victoria are in a similar situation, a few hours drive away from Adelaide, and a day or more drive away from Melbourne.

The number of time zones in Australia has been reduced in recent years. How many people remember crossing the Nullabore in the 1970s, and going through two extra time zones - from memory I think that one was called Central Mid Western Time, but I've forgotten the name of the other one.

Unfortunately, Australia is a huge place, and adopting time zones by states, while it probably sounded like a sound idea to Federation era Politicians back when Australian was very sparsely populated, doesn't really make sense one hundred and fourteen years later.

But, the discussion of redesigning time zones in Australia is probably something only a very brave politician would delve into, so I guess the situation regarding Time Zones and DST usage will continue without any real change for some time to come.

Regards,

RoyG

[Pittwater Pete]

WA and NT don't have daylight saving either

They're too far away for Easteners to be worried about

Pete.