I was thinking along these lines too. The "rust" sure looks like its flaking away from the clean steel, not towards it, which makes me something got onto it and burned. Hard to tell from these photos though.
So, I'll offer my thoughts on this that I can tell definitely go against the grain based on everyone elses replies.
I am one of the few that does more high temp cooks than low and slow on my grill. In my experience (over a year with my RecTeq used probably twice a week, before that a Camp Chef...
Well the thought process was that if I could find a strip that truly CUT power to each individual plug, it would be a lot more unlikely for multiple things to go whacky.
This is gonna be a weird one, but has anyone ever seen, or used a power strip thats Wifi? I'll explain why. Like many of you, I don't trust leaving my grill plugged in, because we all know software can fail at any time. The solution I've thought of is a wifi power strip that you can control...