Thankfully, the not so shocking truth about firing up a Raclette grill on New Year’s Eve

In the last six years we’ve used our Raclette grill twice, both times the lights went out.

Terms of Use: This image is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License It is attributed to Ty Nigh and the original version, which is larger, can be found here.

In the last six years we’ve used our Raclette grill twice, both times during a New Year’s dinner party and each time a trip switch was triggered in our consumer unit, plunging us and our astonished-guests into darkness :(. Having carried out extensive research (a quick 5 minute Google search), it would appear that I am not alone. Apartments all around are plunged into darkness when faulty devices are plugged into the domestic power system. But happily that’s all that happens, thanks to the residual current device or RCD.

Now before you click off the page, I’m not going to get all technical on you, but I am going to point out what an amazing little life saving device this is. Most of us take electricity in the home for granted. We plug in our kettle, toaster, iron, vacuum cleaner, you name it and nothing unexpected happens, but without a RCD, defective equipment would be a killer!  At best it might start a fire, but worst still it could be lethal, so let’s celebrate the technology that makes this possible. For us, dinner was saved by a family member and a replacement grill, but the true hero in the story was the RCD, without it this story may not have had such a happy ending!

For more on RCDs follow the link.