Jumpstart to spring:
Daylight-saving time to begin three weeks earlier
BY PETER B. BRACE INDEPENDENT WRITER

Quentin the Quahog was wrong on Feb. 2 because his prediction of six more weeks of winter did not account for daylight saving time coming three weeks earlier this year.

In an effort to save energy, the Energy Policy Act passed by Congress in August of 2005, and championed by Rep. Fred Upton, R. -Mich., and Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., included a provision that beginning this year changed the start of daylight saving time from the first Sunday of April to March 11, and its end date from Oct. 28 to Nov. 4, a week later than usual. According to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the extra weeks could save around 100,000 barrels of oil per day of energy use.

However, how much Nantucket ratepayers will save on their electric bills is hard to gauge.

"We had traditionally seen in the last two years about two percent energy savings in the two weeks prior to daylight savings as opposed to the two weeks afterwards," said National Grid spokesman David Graves. "That's what's got us scratching our heads. ...We don't know."

Graves said that for April 2006, Nantucket used 9,502,289-kilowatt hours translating into 316,742-kilowatt hours per day. That number divided by the 10,868 ratepayers Graves said National Grid has on Nantucket, equals about 29 kilowatt hours per day used by each ratepayer.

"There may be an increased usage those first three weeks because it will be colder," he said. "Obviously, people will be turning on their lights later in the day, but we really can't say because we don't know."

Another impact could be on computers that are not prepared for the change. All computers, both Macs and PCs, have built-in software that automatically springs forward and falls back the computers' internal clocks. However, the builtin software does not account for this new schedule.

For Mac and PC users alike, there is an easy fix that comes with periodic operating system software upgrades that should already have occurred. But computer users of either ilk must elect to download the software patch.

For users in larger systems, such as those of the town and the airport, their information technology people handle the change. When contacted, neither entity seemed worried.

"What we're doing is we're applying Microsoft updates that include the patch for this, so we're in the process of applying this to all our servers and desktops," said Town IT Administrator Linda Rhodes.

At the airport, Environmental Coordinator Jack Wheeler is taking similar measures and expects no computer problems.

Turning our clocks one hour ahead at 2 a.m. on Sunday, March 11 means the sun will rise around 6:59 a.m. and set at 6:42 p.m., according to Vladimir Strelnitski, director of astronomy at the Maria Mitchell Association.

That extra hour of daylight three weeks early is good news for people whose lives are frantic during the latter part of March.

President Woodrow Wilson signed the daylight-saving time law into effect on March 31, 1918. The law was repealed after World War I in 1919, but was reestablished yearround during World War II to conserve energy for the war effort. The existing spring-forward-fall-back schedule came into being, according to Answers.com, in 1987, when federal legislation changed daylightsaving to the first Sunday in April and the last Sunday in October for 48 states. Arizona and Hawaii do not adhere to daylight-saving time. I