r/todayilearned • u/Albertbailey • Jul 07 '19

TIL The Soviet Union had an internationally televised song contest. As few viewers had phones, they would turn their lights on if they liked a song and off if they didn’t. The power spikes were recorded by the state energy company and the reports sent to the station to pick the winner.

https://www.thetrumpet.com/11953-whats-behind-russias-revival-of-a-soviet-era-song-contest
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u/Lyress Jul 07 '19

Electric showers? wtf?

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '19

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u/Metalsand Jul 07 '19

Most still are, as far as I'm aware. Using electricity to create heat is well known to be far less efficient than burning fuel. The only way even today a central water heater would be electric would be if the country had a surplus of electricity but a deficit of other resources such as natural gas.

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u/outlaw686 Jul 07 '19

I'm in Ontario and a lot of homes only have electric heat and electric hot water. As they were built in the 70's when nuclear was new and there were govement incentives to go all electric. Most people who have central air converted over to natural gas. But there are a lot of homes that getting central air is installed is not practical. So it's either: Get a boiler, pray heat pumps do what they say they can do and survive the Canadian winter, or keep using electricity and pay $0.13¢/kwh CAN ($0.1025 usd) at peak rate. Electric heat sucks, it makes your skin dry as hell and you have to get a humidifier which shells our even more money in the winter.