Good old Daylight savings time is officially in play. For many of you reading this, you may never have heard of it, but it's something we do in much of the United States, Canada, and Europe, as well as other parts of the world. Basically, we move our clocks an hour forward for about half of the year.

The history of daylight savings time is actually pretty interesting, and recently, it was moved into March because it was deemed to save significant amounts of energy. (Culturally, more people stay up later than get up early, therefore - less lights are used!).

In any case, this reminded me of a common question: How do I model Daylight savings time in TRACE 700 or eQUEST

It's really easy!

To make the change in TRACE 700

1. Go to the Actions Menu
2. Select "Change Load Parameters"
3. In the lower right, select the Daylight savings time period (this would be March-November for many regions).
4. NOTE - the "Summer Period" is unrelated to daylight savings time, but it is easy to mistake. However, if you made the mistake of selecting March-November for the summer period, the impact would be minor!

To make the Change in eQUEST:

Daylight Savings time is automatically implemented in eQUEST. It is not sufficiently easy to change the exact months.

It is "On" by default, which works for much of eQUEST's market, but the large international audience may want to know how to turn it off:

1. Go to the "Project and Site Module"
2. Right click on "Site Data" and select "Properties
3. On the first tab, you can simply set "Daylight savings time" to "No"

Good luck with Daylight Savings time. Please note that it has a significant impact when you model Daylighting (daylight harvesting), but it also has an impact on your cooling and heating profiles!