I'm an electrical engineer and the first project I worked in my professional life was a Power Quality Meter, used by the power company at my city, in Brazil.
In our specific case, DST was pretty good at shifting the two main power demands we had at night: lighting and the effect of people going home (taking a heated shower, using elevators...)
I had access to oscillographies at all power stations in my state (which is not small, here is located the biggest hydroelectrical dam in the World, by annual production). It happened that during DST the quality of the power being provided increased.
I'm not arguing here that this is a solid proof that DST is good, but the effect of concentrated demand and the subtle implications that this has on the actual efficiency of the power grid seem to be all too often neglected.
Well, it's a good discussion, and my main point here is that things are not as simple as they may appear at a first glance :)
I get your point. I see it as a pain in the backside from a programming point of view. Managing arbitrary dst changes which keep changing at the whims of political powers is exhausting at best.
In our specific case, DST was pretty good at shifting the two main power demands we had at night: lighting and the effect of people going home (taking a heated shower, using elevators...)
I had access to oscillographies at all power stations in my state (which is not small, here is located the biggest hydroelectrical dam in the World, by annual production). It happened that during DST the quality of the power being provided increased.
I'm not arguing here that this is a solid proof that DST is good, but the effect of concentrated demand and the subtle implications that this has on the actual efficiency of the power grid seem to be all too often neglected.
Well, it's a good discussion, and my main point here is that things are not as simple as they may appear at a first glance :)