In the night between Saturday 24 and Sunday 25 March, summer time returns in Italy, which will last for the next seven months. As a result of moving the hands of clocks forward an hour, Terna - the company that manages the national electricity grid - estimates a lower consumption of electricity equal to about 562 million kilowatt hours, a quantity corresponding to the average annual requirement of about 200 thousand families.
Considering that a kilowatt hour costs the average domestic customer about 20,62 euro cents before taxes, the estimated economic savings for the system relating to lower electricity consumption in the summer time period for 2018 is equal to 116 million EUR.
From 2004 to 2017, according to data processed by Terna, the lower electricity consumption for the country due to summer time was around 8 billion and 540 million kilowatt hours overall (quantity equivalent to the annual electricity demand of a region such as Sardinia) and in economic terms has led to savings for citizens of approximately 1 billion and 435 million euros.
In the spring-summer period, the month with the greatest energy savings estimated by Terna is October, with around 158 million kilowatt hours (equal to around 30% of the total). Moving the hands forward by one hour 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, the "delay" effect in switching on the light bulbs occurs in the evening hours, when work activities are mostly finished, and records 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.
Solar time will be restored in the night between 27 and 28 October 2018. 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.
