“DST was a revolutionary, if not unorthodox, approach in conserving energy”
THE First Marcos Administration implemented the Daylight SavingTime (DST) scheme in 1975.
Figuratively resorting to rolling back the clock hands was an offshoot of the perceived oil crisis, triggered by the 1974 Oil Embargo imposed by the Muslim-states-members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
It was their way of sympathizing with the Moro Muslims locked in state of genocidal wars. and dissidence against the national government.
DST was a revolutionary, if not unorthodox, approach in conserving energy:
Time was made an hour advance for the working period so that work hours or office hours become “8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.” when the daily time for such period was 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. for actual daily-time reckoning.
All workplace clocks and workers’ timepieces were timed one hour ahead of the actual work period. It was time-in at 7:00 a.m. – read 8:00 a.m. on workplace clocks and on individual timepieces as well as in all morning newscasts.
It was lunchtime at 11:00 a.m. and at 4:00 p.m. was the bandy clock time-out.
An oil embargo is like an economic sanction imposed for political reasons. It was a trade restriction on shipment of petroleum products from all OPEC member-countries to the Philippines, in protest against purported genocidal war waged against the country’s Muslim minority in the south.
The current Marcos Administration has issued Memorandum Circular 114, providing details on the implementation of a temporary four-day workweek.
Directives under MC 114 cover all national government agencies, government-owned or -controlled corporations, local government units, Constitutional bodies, state universities and colleges, and other government agencies.
A four-day workweek is being implemented effective March 8 as an energy conservation measure.
But the country’s business sector, for its part, is being cautious on the proposed four-day workweek, “noting its impact will differ across various sectors,” according to a report by the Manila Standard.
Now how does cutting on the work period conserve energy? According to the Law on Conservation of Energy, “Energy can neither be created nor destroyed.” But (if one may add), energy like time can be lost or wasted.
In the case of the First Marcos Administration, an hour of the remaining daylight period (4:00 – 5:00 p.m.) would enable electricity consumers to save an hour of power utility (in kilowatt) using the remaining one-hour of daylight each day, before switching on home lights.
An hour of power unutilized translates to millions of Kilowatt-Hours saved from households, as well as in institutional and industrial consumption of electrical energy.
In the case of the present Marcos Administration, a whole day of work-hours skipped on the fifth day, comprise eight hours of the time factor of the power supply needed to run air-conditioning units; or light bulbs and provide electricity supply to power outlets for office equipment.
In other words, power in volt-ampere translated to kilowatt, and when multiplied to a 0 time in hour, equals zero energy utilized for the whole period of eight work-hours.
For the previous Marcos Administration, a 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. work period (read 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on work watches and on media) was the daily ins and outs order of each day—from June to Oct. 1975 when President Ferdinand E. Marcos sent First Lady Imelda Romualdez-Marcos and Foreign Minister Pacifico Castro for an audience with Libyan Leader Moammar Ghaddafy in Tripoli.
The meeting led to the clandestine opening of the peace negotiation between the Manila Government and the Moro National Liberation Front, and the lifting of the oil embargo sometime in October that year. The rest is history.
To me—more importantly—the post DST implementation period provided what I may call a “situational opportunity” to mull about developing a non-brushed generator driven by a battery-powered magnetic motor.
Mechanically coupled, the system works on a pattern of discharging-and-charging cycle.
Not much success had been attained in my first attempt to develop the first utility model in 1977.
But in 2022, a second model was developed in my place in Cotabato City (out of hard-earned professional fee from a print documentary job for the United Nations Development Program in 2022),
My second craft was developed into a Utility Model and has been registered as the Tri-Mode Power Generator in the Certificate of Patent issued by the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines in May 2022..
Pursuant to RA 8293, the IP Code, my model has been published internationally in the Philippine Gazette for the month-long “Period of Opposition” to determine sheer originality which it passes.
Final components for an optimization project funded by the Ministry of Science and technology in BARMM were ordered customized by China manufacturers, which necessarily exposed its design.
Now, a China-based manufacturer comes up with a similar design.
There could be no way to stop that manufacturing production, if ever; but a partnership trade at commercialization (Article III RA 10066) would be explorable.
(The writer, a journalist-inventor, is the Manila Standard news correspondent from Cotabato City)
