A total saving of almost 93 million euros in 7 months. This is Terna's forecast for the summer time period, which will start on the night between Saturday 29 and Sunday 30 March, with the clocks moving forward one hour.
There are almost 557 million kilowatt hours saved: an amount of energy corresponding to the average annual needs of around 200 families. In terms of costs, considering that a kilowatt hour costs the end customer on average about 16,6 euro cents after taxes, the estimated economic savings relating to summer time for 2014 is approximately 92,6 million euro .
From 2004 to 2013, Italy saved a total of about 6,6 billion kilowatt hours, corresponding to about 950 million euros of lower costs.
In the spring-summer period, the month that marks the greatest estimated energy savings is April, with 144,2 million kilowatt hours (equal to 26% of the total). In autumn, however, the record goes to the month of October with 152,3 million kilowatt hours saved. This is due to the fact that April has "shorter" days in terms of natural light than the months of the entire period.
Moving the hands one hour forward therefore delays the use of artificial light at a time when work activities are still in full swing. In the summer months, from June to August, on the other hand, since the days are already "longer" than in April, the "delay" effect in turning on the light bulbs occurs in the evening hours, when work activities are mostly finished , and shows less evident results in terms of electricity savings.
It should also be remembered that the greater demand for electricity in the hottest summer months is due to the use of air conditioners, and is therefore independent of daylight saving time, since it is linked exclusively to climatic and temperature factors and not to the greater number of hours of natural light.
From the homepage of the Terna website, www.terna.it, the "load curve" is visible, which represents the trend of electricity consumption in Italy in real time. Standard time will be restored in the night between 25 and 26 October 2014.
