What if the power went out at sunset?
The power goes off when the sun goes down, every day, everywhere. Dinner is early and bedtime is earlier.
Sunset. The whole block goes dark within a minute.
The first evening
At sunset the lights go out across the city at once. Fridges stop humming, phones become torches, and anyone halfway through cooking finds out how dark a kitchen really is.
The first night feels like a power cut with candles. By the third, people have bought torches, camping lamps and a lot of food that doesn’t need cooking.
The first winter
Winter is hard. In northern Europe the sun sets before five, so the working day shrinks and shops close in the afternoon. Hospitals, trains and traffic lights run on their own backup supply, and everyone else plans around the dark.
People eat earlier and go to bed earlier. Evenings without screens feel very long at first, and a lot of families start playing cards again.
Ten years on
Kids born after the change think of night as the time when machines stop. New homes come with batteries charged by the day’s sun, enough for a lamp and a fridge until morning.
Night shifts have mostly gone, and so have late-night shops. Summer is everyone’s favourite season by a long way.
Who wins
- Early risersThe day now starts and ends with the light, which suits them perfectly.
- Home battery makersEvery household wants enough stored power to get through the evening.
- AstronomersWith the cities dark, you can see the Milky Way from the middle of town.
- Board game shopsTheir best decade in living memory.
Who loses
- Night-shift workersThe work still needs doing. Now it has to happen before dusk.
- Anyone living far northIn December, Oslo gets about six hours of daylight.
- RestaurantsDinner service ends when the sun goes down.
The sun keeps its own hours, and people don’t. A rule like this would work fine in June and badly in December, which is exactly when everyone would vote against it.
Could you live without evenings?
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