Will Armenia Switch to Summer and Winter Time?

The government has provided a negative conclusion on the legislative initiative by the Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly, Alen Simonyan, which proposed transitioning to summer time in March and winter time in October, according to a statement from the Government of Armenia.

The bill suggested a time change (moving the clock forward one hour on the last Sunday in March and back one hour on the last Sunday in October), resulting in an increase in daylight by an average of 50 minutes.

According to preliminary analysis, the average sunrise time during the suggested period is 6:10 AM, while the average sunset is at 7:50 PM. It is assumed that the average citizen spends 16 hours awake daily. For calculation purposes, the day is taken to start at 7:00 AM and end at 11:00 PM.

This results in an average of 12 hours and 50 minutes of daylight from March to October, which, due to the proposed changes, would increase by 50 minutes to 13 hours and 40 minutes, reducing the required hours of artificial light by 9% annually.

It is noted that the potential benefits have been calculated in two ways: savings on lighting across the economy and within households. “In the first approach, the estimate uses the lighting costs in the U.S., accounting for 6% of electricity expenses. A 9% savings would represent approximately 0.54% or 1.1 billion AMD in electricity savings. The second method assumes that lighting consumption accounts for 8% of household electricity usage, considering that households contribute approximately 36% of total electricity consumption, leading to about 561 million AMD in savings,” the conclusion states.

Moreover, several studies indicate that changes in time can have adverse effects, such as economic losses, an increase in production accidents due to loss of attention in the 5-10 days following the transition, reduced productivity, a rise in the number of accidents, various potential health issues, and challenges associated with flight scheduling for airlines.