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Daylight Saving and Local Time

DesignBuilder allows you to model the effect of daylight saving time where the clocks are moved forward one hour in the summer months in most non-equatorial countries.  The timing of this is handled automatically using DesignBuilders' time zones database when you load data from one of the Location templates supplied with the program.

You can set the Time zone at the Site level on the Location tab:

There are however some factors you should be aware of:

• Simulation results are displayed in 'local mean time'.  This means that during the summer, occupancy will appear to start 1 hour earlier in the day than it does in the winter.  To help you pinpoint this, DesignBuilder prints the times when daylight saving starts and ends on the graph.
• Visualisations use local mean time when setting the position of the sun for site shading analysis. Again you should add 1 hour to the time to see shading for local time.