Show HN: Mac toolbar app to show electricity cutoff schedule, Hacker News

          _{Added on 24 / Oct / 2019}

What?

  InLebanonwe have regular electricity cut off schedules. It depends on where you’re based:

• Beirut: every three hours.

  

• Other regions: alternate between 4 hours cut off then 6 hours of power

  This is a pain to deal with if you don’t have alternative power sources. It’s one of the main things that therecent protestsdemand to fix.

  We actually have a whole market of private large generators owners that sell you electricity to mitigate this. They add an additional switch to your powersource that get powered automatically when the electricity is cut out.

2. Problem

  The problems is that the private generator subscription is expensive (x6 grid price) and you subscribe to a limited amperage. If you use more, the breaker will go off. That mean you can’t have your dryer, dishwasher & iron running at the same time as your fridge, tv & lights.

  Do you see the problem? If you want to let’s say, turn on your dryer you have to check first if your electricity is running on the grid or on the generators. So you’ll have to go to where the breaker is inserted (you can install indicators in your home) and check first then power on your appliance.

3. Solution

  This get annoying over time. Thankfully the cut-off are almost always on schedule. So if you know what’s today’s schedule you can guess wether or not you’re running on the grid.

  That’s whereElectricity CutOff appcome. It’ll show you the current status: wether the electricity is comming from the grid or from the generators. It’ll also send a notification when the status get switched.

You can quickly see the current status based on the icon shown:

• The bolt mean that it’s on the grid

  

• The generator mean that … you guessed, it’s running on the generator

4. Conclusion

  I’m thinking on having a more practical way to get the status right. Maybe I can check the current / voltage that’s comming? Or attach an RPI to the breaker in some way and get readings when it’s on?

  Any way, that’s something for another day.

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