Recent discussions with electricians in Central Australia bought up an interesting topic regading the installations of timers for stoves & hotplate circuits in dwellings located in remote communities.

The reason this is being done was two-fold: firstly for safety where people were leaving the cooking appliances on & going to town & also to reduce the occurance of clocking up large power bills as most of these dwellings are fitted with credit power meters.

The wiring is centered around a contactor for the control of the supply to the cooking appliances. A two hour timer is installed in the kitchen where the occupants press the button to operate the timer, which in turn operates the contactor to supply the power to the cooking appliances.

Has anyone else ever seen such a set-up used elsewhere? An isolating switch is still used as in a normal installation to interrupt the power if the need arises (maintenance or fire for example)