Power to the People!

There are a few of these mystery switches on baseboards in the house. I have no clue what they do. For an immigrant from Canada, English power is baffling.

Here are the plugs to the left of the kitchen stove - sorry, the hob.

The two UK plugs on the right are just that - wall outlets, each with a switch. The two separate switches on the left are for the refrigerator and freezer respectively.

Here are the switches to the right of the hob:

The leftmost plug has an adaptor in it to allow the use of a North American three prong plug - assuming it's something that can run on 230 volts instead of 110. The switch on the right remains a mystery. (Actually, now I'm wondering if that is the switch for the freezer, leaving the mystery switch on the other side...)

And behind the hob is this:

I assume that the big orange switch is for the stove, but who knows? And finally, in the cabinet, above the stove, behind water glasses and oven mitts, at roughly ceiling height:

That is the only labelled switch in the house. The undercupboard lights are controlled by switches on the sides of them. The plug to the right is for the microwave.

Moving around, we come to the switches outside the bathroom door:

Left: bathroom light and exhaust fan. Right, this tiny electric heater attached to the wall:

Note the tiny string hanging down, which is how you turn it on and off.

I will say one thing though: with 230 volts of power anything that makes heat: kettles, toasters, heaters... works very fast. We're spoiled.

Now, back outside the door, way up by the ceiling, is this one. No idea.:

Britain has done heating and electricity well. We have a smart meter that tells us how much we've spent today on power:

After only a couple of days, we know that the bulk of our electricity use happens at night, when rates are half what is charged during the day. That’s because overnight is when you charge up your storage heaters, a pre-heat-pump technology that's actually pretty clever.

It looks like a regular radiator, but at night is stores heat inside of it, then during day releases it to warm the room.

So before bed, you turn the Input knob up, and the Output knob down. In the morning, you switch them, and are nice and toasty.

Honestly, I have no idea if these (and these units are probably a decade or more old) are more efficient than other heating solutions, but it does seem like a clever way to go.

We would have LOVED these in Nova Scotia.

Obviously, we're still figuring things out. I think that we get really cheap power rates on Saturday and Sunday from 11 to 4, so that's when you run your laundry and other power -heavy things. Right now EDF is saying that we're looking at roughly £130-140 per month, which feels high, but probably cheaper than using oil back in Nova Scotia.

I suspect that we'll benefit from the detailed energy tracking and find ways to keep power use down.