In Ireland storage heating was very popular in the 1960s - 1980s both as a retrofit and in new build. ESB (the power company) used to have "Gold Shield Home" branding in the 1980s. Before that it was just "The All-Electric Home".
http://www.esb.ie/main/energy_home/customer_gold.jspDepending on the era of installation it's done a few different ways.
The oldest installations had a dual-dial meter and a big electromechanical time clock which looked like an electricity meter. That activated the night-rate dial on the meter and also powered up the storage heaters.
Each heater than had settings on the top and an isolating switch on the wall beside it.
More modern installations use more digital metering and more sophisticated controls.
All-Electric heating fell out of favour as natural gas became more widely available in Ireland. You have to realise that we didn't have natural gas here until the 1980s. "Town Gas" made from oil/coal was around since the dawn of gas technology, but it was confined to larger towns and cities. As a result, most suburban homes built in the 1950s-1980s were heated with either pressure jet oil systems or electric storage heating.
The gas networks were vastly modernised and extended in the late 1970s/1980s when natural gas was discovered off the coast of Cork.
A very large % of the existing pressure jet oil systems converted over to natural gas and gas also replaced many of the electric systems too.
You can still find electric storage heating in apartments where the developer was too cheap to put in a gas fired hydronic system. Typically, you'll find them in student accommodation etc or in old houses where installing the plumbing for a gas-fired hydronic system was regarded as too distruptive.
The above link gives you the details and operating instructions for a 'gold sheild' all electric home
This is the control system that ESB usually install :
http://www.devi.ie/3535DD54-DEF0-4258-B623-AC009165EEB9.W5Dochttp://www.devi.ie/3535DD54-DEF0-4258-B623-AC009165EEB9.W5DocIt anticipates the heat it needs to put into the storage heaters based on the outdoor temp etc.. quite a smart system.
