Night light

Energy conservation is the motive for extending daylight-saving time by four weeks, but local electricity providers aren’t betting their clocks on it.

A congressional directive rolls clocks forward by one hour on March 11 — three weeks earlier than usual — changing some daylight rhythms of work and play.

It’s already caused more work for computer technicians, but the city is hoping the extra evening light will get golfers out earlier in the season and help offset revenue losses from the harsh winter.

But the main idea behind setting clocks ahead by one hour on March 11 is that people will be saving energy by turning their lights on an hour later in the evening.

Connie Kacprowicz of Columbia Water and Light said she’s skeptical of the logic behind the change in the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

“For the first month or so, I will be using more lights in the morning and less when I come home,” Kacprowicz said. “It’s a trade-off.”

Daylight-saving time begins at 2 a.m. March 11, three weeks sooner than in previous years. It will end at 2 a.m. Nov. 4, one week later than usual.

Ryan Euliss, manager of engineering at the Boone Electric Cooperative, said he believes the switch “will have more of an effect on a large scale than a local scale.”

Turning on residential lights, parking lot lights, neon signs and street lights an hour later adds up, he said, but the local impact will be smaller.

Software manufactures and information technologists have been working to update computer time systems before the changeover occurs.

Every business that uses computers — and every computer owner for that matter — will have to update their computer’s internal clocks, which affect calendar and e-mail times.

Newer computer systems, including the Windows Vista and Mac OS X’s Tiger and Panther versions have already been updated with the change. Older systems need to be done manually or by installing patches available on the Internet.

“It’s a lot of work,” said Terry Robb of MU’s Division of Information Technology.

Robb said technicians have been installing patches since December to change the daylight saving period on hundreds of university servers. While it doesn’t take long to install the patch, he said, the volume of systems needing attention means the fixes have taken quite a bit of time. The last major patch for MU computer programs came Sunday, he said.

Robb said the cost for converting computer systems has not been calculated, but since the maintenance patches are free, the biggest cost is staff labor.

People involved in outdoor recreation are in position to take advantage of the extra evening light.

Mike Griggs, park services manager for the Columbia Department of Parks and Recreation, is optimistic about the increased use of baseball and golf areas that do not have lights for nighttime activities.

“We usually begin our youth baseball practice around March 15,” Griggs said. In previous years, he said, “at best they could practice from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.”

An earlier daylight-saving time means teams will be able to use the extra hour of sunlight to practice more.

Griggs also believes the evening light will lead to a significant increase in the number of golfers playing at Lake of the Woods and L.A. Nickell courses, which have suffered from decreased revenue because of the harsh winter weather. The courses, which opened this week, had been closed since Jan. 11.

“This is the longest number of consecutive days we’ve ever been without opening the golf course,” Griggs said.

Kacprowicz was hesitant to predict the effect on energy consumption because no conclusive study has been done.

“Unless someone would do a specific study, it’s too hard to tell,” she said.

Whether the extra hour of light at the end of the day helps save energy will not be known until the experiment ends in the fall.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.