If there is food cooking on my electric stove and the power goes out, there's a chance I could forget to turn off the stove and the power could return when I'm not around. This could potentially cause a fire.

I propose the following: A reset button that must be pressed on the stove in order to activate any of the elements. This reset would be required after power is applied to the stove. This would most likely be a latching relay type setup where the relay would have power applied to it and then keep itself latched until power was not applied (power failure). The reset button would again apply power to the relay's coil and it would then again make contact to the source of power.

The relay should be heavy duty and capable of handling the loads associated with an electric stove. The relay would have 3 poles - all poles contacting (closing) when power is applied to the relay's coil. Pole #1 is the power to the relay's coil that keeps the coil powered when the relay receives the initial power. Poles #2 and #3 would be heavy duty and each would handle one leg (110 VAC) of the required power. Neutral would be unswitched.
-- BMCCUE, Oct 04 2005

I used to work for British Telecom, and one of their special products was a call-out system for fire brigades. Along with the relays to start the fire truck engines via an umbilical, and open the fire station doors on receipt of a call was another heavy-duty mains relay to turn off the station cooker - it seems more than one crew had returned to the smoking remains of their station, having been called out pre-meal.
(And, no, I don't know if the door-opening relay was ever rendered redundant by the fire truck being left in-gear)
-- coprocephalous, Oct 04 2005



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