Indeed; since timezones have the same abbreviations for multiple different timezones, it is difficult to collect a set of abbreviations that are consistent across a data set.

I wrote cpppo (https://github.com/pjkundert/cpppo.git) to work with industrial data communications in various timezones. The cpppo.history module assures fast and consistent handling (and serialization/deserialization) of time series data across a selected set of consistent timezone abbreviations.

If speed and consistency is an issue it may be of interest.