This also leads to incredibly interesting (or funny) situations. A coworker of mine uses a simple/trivial timer, plugs it in the power outlet and therefor predetermines some things that Should Happen on Shabbat.

Now, if there's a brown-out for say 3h and you're not allowed to interact with that thing until Shabbat is over, you .. get interesting side effects and have to reschedule the daily life.