save big!

for years, i've been saying that i didn't believe the conventional wisdom that daylight saving time saves energy. now a new study suggests i'm right:

The switch to daylight saving time is costing residential electricity users in Indiana $8.6 million a year, according to a new study.

"The point of this study is just to shed light on the old myth that daylight saving time saves energy," said Matthew J. Kotchen, a University of California-Santa Barbara economics professor who conducted the study.

Kotchen said the energy-saving argument has been made since Benjamin Franklin raised the issue more than 200 years ago.

The study found electricity consumption -- when differences in weather and other factors were taken into consideration -- increased by up to 4 percent. The cost to individual households comes out to $3.19 a year.

$3.19/household might not seem like a lot, but it adds up pretty quickly when you're talking about millions of homes (or hundreds of millions nationwide). ¶