Gridwatch, the News24 mobi-site and app that has become the ubiquitous load-shedding daily planner for power-less South Africans, is now available to download on both iOS and Android.
Gridwatch was first launched as a mobi-site in February and then as a free app for Android later that month. The iOS app went live on 11 June and within two days of launch, has reached the top free app rank in the SA iTunes store.
“We’ve built the biggest load-shedding database in South Africa,” says head of product development at 24.com, Cathryn Reece. “The Eskom schedules are disaggregated across municipalities which meant that South Africans struggled to find their local and national schedules and to plan for outages.”
With a direct link to Eskom, so that Stage levels are accurately reported, and a full set of Eskom schedule updates once a week, News24 is able to keep in sync with schedules for those customers supplied directly by Eskom. Municipal schedules are updated manually, as and when new documentation is released.
Gridwatch is the only app that allows for customised alerts for all saved locations. “We’ve invested a tremendous amount of human resource and technology into speeding up our push alerts so that users get real time information about load-shedding,” says Reece.
With over 340 000 app users daily (Apple and Android) and over 2 million screen views in total, the app continues to climb the popularity ladder.
