A degree day is a measure of heating or cooling. Totalized degree days from an appropriate starting date are used to plan the planting of crops and management of pests and pest control timing. Weekly or monthly degree-day figures may also be used within an energy monitoring and targeting scheme to monitor the heating and cooling costs of climate controlled buildings, while annual figures can be used for estimating future costs.
A degree day is computed as the integral of a function of time that generally varies with temperature. The function is truncated to upper and lower limits that vary by organism, or to limits that are appropriate for climate control. The function can be estimated or measured by one of the following methods, in each case by reference to a chosen base temperature:
- frequent measurements and continuously integrating the temperature deficit or excess;
- Treating each day's temperature profile as a sine wave with amplitude equal to the day's temperature variation, measured from max and min, and totalling the daily results;
- As above, but calculating the daily difference between mean temperature and base temperature;
- As previous, but with modified formulae on days when the max and min straddle the base temperature.
A zero degree-day in energy monitoring and targeting is when either heating or cooling consumption is at a minimum, which is useful with power utility companies in predicting seasonal low points in energy demand.
Famous quotes containing the words degree and/or day:
“Take but degree away, untune that string,
And hark what discord follows!
...
Force should be right, or, rather, right and wrong—
Between whose endless jar justice resides—
Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
Then everything includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite, an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And last eat up himself.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“We can remember as easily as the day we were born
The maggots we passed on the way and how the day bled
And the night too on hearing us, though we spoke only our childish
Ideas and never tried to impress anybody even when somewhat older.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)