refrigerators, timers and the police

Hey everyone, it's my first thread, so i apologise for starting it with questions... but i need your advice...

In two weeks I will be starting my first indoor grow of "significant" size - I have until now grown with 250 watts HID and am moving up to 1200.
I live in the UK, where weed has recently been upgraded to class B, and I, like most, do not want to get caught. It might be paranoia but as i'm guessing the only way to bust a house growing weed besides snitching is through IR (which i've got covered with detection foil) and electrical consumption.

I need your opinion - I live in a house with 3 other people in a student area (therefore where lots of computers are likely to be on all the time in one house, stereos are being played, etc.), and while this may camouflage the added electrical consumption it may also stand out more prominently - "where there are students there are drugs, if a student house is consuming twice as much as its identically laid out neighbour something is wrong"...
so do you think the 1200watt extra will be an obvious "red flag"?
What does the police actually look for when busting innocent home-growers?

And also, I was thinking of ways to get electrical usage to drop. I'm going to a) coerce my flatmates into leaving computers off at night, but that isn't very nice of me and besides not a reliable method
b) i'd thought of putting the fridge, being the heaviest electrical consumer besides my HPS lights, on a timer, and was wondering if anybody knows how long a fridge stays cold for when the power is off..? And also whether this technique would actually be effective considering the starting wattage of a fridge is much higher than its continued usage requirements... (namely if any of you are electricians/know a lot about appliances, how long is the "reboot period" of a fridge..?)

I would really appreciate some help here, i love growing weed and i just want to pursue my favourite hobby with as much peace of mind as i can..

Dude I wouldn't worry about it.

In a student house there'll be so much power being used an extra KW on the load isn't going to be suspicious. (plus I've never heard of anyone actually getting caught this way).

Mosts busts here in the UK are due to complaints about the smell.

And just for the record Cannabis hasn't actually been upgraded, this is just a suggestion from the Home Secretary, check www.homeoffice.gov.uk , to go through this needs to be approved by parliment, and the soonest that can happen will be early 2009.

yeh man wouldn't worry to much, its still class c. just hide the smell!