There is no electricity saving from Belarus switching to winter time - Ministry of Energy

February 10, Minsk /BELTA/. There is no electricity saving from Belarus's transition to winter time, Lyudmila Zenkovich, assistant to the Minister of Energy, told a BELTA correspondent. "For Belarus, the effect of the transition to seasonal time is short-lived (about a month) in spring. No economic effect is observed for the rest of the year," she noted. To assess changes in Belarus's electricity consumption during the transition to summer time, average daily schedules of working days for the week before and after the clock change were considered. The Ministry of Energy explained that the transition to summer time affects the formation of the evening peak: it occurs 2 hours later and decreases by 150 MW, while daily electricity consumption decreases by 0.96 million kWh. At the same time, when summer time is canceled, daily electricity consumption increases by 0.56 million kWh, the evening peak load increases by 120 MW and occurs 1 hour earlier. Thus, the effect of electricity saving from the transition to summer time is about 20 million kWh (0.06% of the annual electricity consumption of the unified energy system of Belarus). It was previously reported that the expediency of switching to winter time in Belarus would be discussed. As told to a BELTA correspondent at the Belarusian State Institute of Metrology (BelGIM), commenting on the Russian Federation's decision not to turn back the clock by one hour from autumn 2011, a meeting of the inter-sectoral commission on time, frequency, and parameters of Earth's rotation of the Republic of Belarus will be held in the near future, where this issue will be discussed and a decision will be prepared. This commission traditionally decides on the introduction of summer and winter time in Belarus. Therefore, as usual, on the last Sunday of March this year, the clocks in Belarus will be moved forward by one hour. As for autumn, a decision is yet to be made. "We still have time to make this decision, but we will not resolve this issue so quickly, as Russia prepared for it for two years," BelGIM specialists noted. In Russia, the transition to winter time has been canceled since autumn this year. This was announced by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who gave the relevant instructions to the country's government. In Belarus, the difference with Moscow time is one hour.-0-