Companies Pay Surprise Fee to Support U.S. Energy Efficiency

A couple of years ago, the U.S. Congress passed a law making the period of "daylight savings time" each year longer, the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and thus moved the customary dates for "springing forward" and "falling back." For many companies and individuals, this means obtaining a software patch for computer systems and computer-based products.

For some companies, though, just as with the Year 2000 change, their systems are too old for normal support by the manufacturer. Many of these systems are stuck in a time-warp due to regulatory or other reliability issues - the systems may be part of a complex system such as a medical imaging device or a military weapons system, and require extensive recertification if the software system is changed. Reports in tech professionals' online discussions say that companies such as Microsoft may charge as much as $40,000 or more to provide patch assistance to those "legacy" systems, such as Windows 2000 servers. The companies are, in effect, paying an unexpected fee for our increased energy efficiency, estimated at saving 300,000 barrels of oil per year.

In Year 2000 preparation, companies had many years to prepare for the upcoming event. Analyses of software systems could be done over time and, though a more complex problem, a company's risk exposure and costs could be estimated, and plans made. In the case of this government-made problem, companies have had to act quickly, understanding their exposure and the extent to which they and their customers might be affected. Since operating system providers such as Microsoft had the same time frame as their customers in which to react, available options for solving the problem have not been known until more recently.