Earthquake in Chile caused a shift in the earth’s axis enough to shorten the day by 1.26 microseconds.

We note the interesting disclosure by NASA that the earthquake in Chile caused a shift in the earth’s axis enough to shorten the day by 1.26 microseconds.

In the light of this celestial consideration of rotation and time, it is appropriate to disclose that Docklands is to have a crucial part in an experiment upon the effect of daylight saving aimed at better understanding the issue of the cost of electricity as well as the social cost of pollution emissions.  It is important to for us to investigate the human contribution to climate change.  To do this, we have to establish a baseline for electricity consumption in Australia.

Domestic electricity consumption in our precinct is to be precisely monitored and the results compared with the geographically, demographically and architecturally similar region of Southbank.  Docklands is uniquely suitable to be the control group because we have a large proportion of apartments.  We are assured that the information will be collected unobtrusively and anonymously from the metering system so absolutely no inconvenience or bother at all will be created by this part of the experiment.

The purpose of daylight saving is to cause an additional hour of sunlight in the evening.  Benjamin Franklin was right to expect homes to use less electricity for lighting because the daylight is retained later in the day.  However, if overall domestic electricity consumption is divided into its uses for lighting, cooling and heating, a worrying factor emerges.  

Moving an hour of daylight from the early morning to the evening should increase electricity consumption for cooling because demand for cooling is greater in the evening when the home is warmer after the heat of the day.  Further, heating is used more in the coldest part of the day, which is the early morning.

The price Docklands citizens will pay for the privilege of the comparison trial will be a small inconvenience twice a day.  When daylight saving ends soon for the rest of Victoria, all Docklands citizens will retain the hour shift in time for the duration of the winter.  They will be getting up an hour earlier and retiring an hour earlier than Southbank residents.

Commercial and industrial use of electricity is greatest during the middle of the day so less affected by changes to the timing of daylight.  Therefore, offices and business are not required to retain daylight saving time.