Which website is best?
07/03/2008 13:20  - (SA)  

Cape Town - As the power crisis in South Africa looks likely to be with us for many more years, several new internet services have started, in an attempt to help consumers of electricity keep track of the situation and find out more information on how to save electricity in their homes and businesses. We take a look at some of these websites and the services they offer, and salute them all for their contribution to the power saving crisis!

Where most of these services are concerned, it's important to bear in mind that they're driven in part by information supplied by Eskom themselves, and there has been some controversy regarding Eskom's schedules and announcements in the past. Many of these services have tried to make sense of Eskom's schedules and information in the most user-friendly manner.

ED'S NOTE: We've had to update this page three times due to all the feedback we've received about new Eskom-related websites. To that end, we will be removing some of these websites from the "Useful Links" section, and featuring all of them on this page.

Poweralert.co.za

While not a website launched by a private entity, Poweralert.co.za was the first web-based service offering real-time information on the power supply status in the country. It's also the power dial you see on TV advising you to turn off all non-essential appliances at night, so it's a well-known and easily-identifiable service. News24 has also recently added the service to our Power Crisis page.

The service is simple. Updated every ten minutes, it provides real-time information (or so it says) on just how much power is available on the national grid, and informs us of whether or not load shedding can be expected. Working from a green, to orange, to red, to brown scale of severity, visitors to the website can immediately tell the power supply situation by the four-colour scale. The downside to this is that it does simplify the power supply situation into just four states, and it doesn't offer any detailed information on just how much power is being supplied nationwide.

The service is driven by the Media Residential Control Centre or MRCC which is in constant contact with Eskom's control centres. According to its website, the MRCC is thus able to evaluate and predict the strain on the electrical network in real time. This is important to bear in mind, as it drives its information off the back of Eskom's information.

Still, from a consumer point of view, it gives you enough of an indication of what's happening at any given time to warn you of possible load shedding or major crises. The website also offers regional power reports and power saving tips.

Our verdict? Go there, or to News24's Power Crisis Page, to find out the official state of the power supply crisis at any given time.

Loadalert.co.za

Loadalert.co.za snuck up on us quietly, but has ruffled the feathers of a lot of its subscribers recently with an update on its services. We'll get to that in a moment.

This website's aims are simple - subscribe to their services and they'll let you know what's potting with the power supply in your area. There's nothing else to it.

There's a definite tone to this website as well. The website features things like, "Enter your email and select your area and we'll send you an email every time the Eskom load shedding schedule changes for that day. Who knows, maybe you'll manage to bath your baby tonight, cook dinner, watch a movie, or avoid getting stuck in the elevator!" and " We are all sick and tired of load shedding. The government tells us it's going to be around for the next 7 years. Let try to plan our lives around the power failures." These guys are sure fed up! For some, it must be nice to find comfort in this attitude (we're all feeling it), but hopefully this makers of this website won't lose interest in keeping the service going when their anger dies down.

The website has also been at the centre of a bit of controversy. Apparently, the service sent out an e-mail to its subscribers saying they have not been able to send out any updates as they have looked at Eskom's information and found it to be incorrect (although their website still does say that Eskom's information is reliable). Apparently, Eskom themselves confirmed that their website's information is wrong. This is of course the danger of all these services relying on Eskom's information - it's hard to know if the information Eskom is putting out is accurate, so all these sites might be doing is passing on inaccurate information.

Not the most interesting of websites, apart from the pessimistic attitude. An okay service if you're just looking for e-mail updates. But it remains to be seen how they'll proceed with the service in light of their "discovery" about Eskom's services.

Myenergy.co.za

This is a recently-launched website but quite a fun one, although it remains to be seen how much longevity it will enjoy. The creators of this website, a software development company, offer a programme free of charge that runs on your desktop and monitors information coming out of Eskom, including the Poweralert.co.za dial.

The programme is fun. I've been running it for a few hours and it allows you to add suburbs you are interested in keeping an eye on, so that if the power goes out in that area, or load shedding is expected, you can be told about it. This is the best aggregation of Eskom's load shedding schedules (and man, they are confusing!) we've seen yet. You can also look ahead on the schedule to help you plan. Of course, this would all work much better if Eskom stuck to their schedules, but kudos to these guys for presenting this info in such a user-friendly way.

The programme, according to their website, also helps you out if you are load shed while working on your computer. A press release states "MyEnergy Monitor will perform custom actions upon the detection of a expected power outage. These include a simple desktop notification, automatic computer shutdown and, for system administrators, Windows event logging."

Having not been able to test this function, it remains to be seen how user-friendly this part of the programme will be (just how "automatic" is this "automatic" shut down going to be?) but it sure sounds like a smart solution for users.

This website is clean and user-friendly, and designed mostly to get you to download the programme. I'm not sure how long you'll want to keep the programme installed on your system (especially in times of no load shedding, like these last few weeks) but the more pro-active consumer will definitely enjoy the functionality of this service! It definitely made the best impression on News24!

Update: After running the programme for a few hours, we're quite impressed, although we're not all convinced we'll keep the programme installed on our machines for a long time. It's also hard to tell if it's working properly because Eskom hasn't changed its alert status from orange for several hours, so nothing has changed in the display.

Shedhappens.co.za

One of the first websites we heard of that launched in response to the power crisis earlier this year, Shedhappens.co.za certainly looks the most comprehensive website we've come across, but there's not much activity going on there at the moment, which is to be expected, seen as we haven't had many incidents of load shedding recently.

In fact, this website may be a victim of its own success. It features fun things like live discussions and discussion forums but the last activity by users was in mid-February, which makes it all look quite stale and doesn't make you want to stick around. That's not Shedhappens.co.za's fault mind you, it's just an observation.

There are a lot of handy tips for saving power in and around the home, but the main thrust of the site is also to get other service providers on board to advertise on the website, so the content for consumers is not front and centre on the homepage. That doesn't make you want to hang around for too long.

We suspect this website will take off again when the next load shedding cycle hits. Still, if you do go along and interact with the website, it will help them out by adding fresh content to the page. All in all, too many subsections to this website, with not enough content to fill them. We'll keep an eye on the interactive spaces on the site when next load shedding becomes a public interest story though!

Support-SA.org

The creator of this website doesn't have a catchy URL, but when you arrive at Support-SA.org, you'll be greeted by a Load Shedding Awareness website which, according to the blurb, "is an online resource and interface into the statistics gathered by our SMS data gathering service."

It's a great concept - users can SMS load shedding information to the website, and their system draws up a map of loadshedding around the country. They also have a wap site so you can access the information on your mobile phone. Like the previous website though, there is little to no activity on this website, so while the service appears to be great, there is little information being sent in. We sent in a test SMS but because all we could say was that the power was on (we didn't want to send in wrong information) we're not certain if the website didn't update because we only reported the power was on, or if there is something wrong with the system.

It's hard to review this one because there's not a lot of activity right now, but as one of the first website we were told about, it's only fair we give it the benefit of the doubt.

Eskomsucks.co.za

We're not sure why this one didn't make the first list of websites for us to review but the beauty of the internet is that we can add it on without much hassle and fuss!

Eskomsucks.co.za is not the prettiest website we've seen, but it definitely gets full marks for a catchy title and some unique features. The tone of the website ("Welcome - if you can see this you have power!") is a lot more fun than some of the others we've reviewed, and the creators have got a really nice section of user-generated commentary and humour on the power crisis.

What we loved most about this page was the list of gas/generator-run restaurants around the country (I've had some of the nicest meals in the dark in some Cape Town restaurants thanks to their good-planning) and the "think-tank" blog where users can discuss their power-saving tips and tricks.

A nice collection of comments, opinion and humour from around the country, and nice to see the basics there too: the Eskom load-shedding schedules and news headline tickers.

Savepower.co.za

First-time visitors to this site would be forgiven for thinking it's just a Google search with a black background (also known as Blackle.com, the energy-saving version of Google that claims to save power by not featuring a white background - and there's even debate on just how effective this gimmick really is), but if you dig a little into this website, there's a lot of really useful information with some decent design elements.

It does seem to be a newcomer to the realm of power crisis websites, so it remains to be seen how regularly it is updated, but it's a reasonable addition to the crowd. Also, it's large link out to Powerofone.org.za (see below) might count against it, as we all found ourselves heading off there after a few minutes of browsing. Still, support this site if you're looking for a local version of Blackle!

Powerofone.org.za

While not technically a user-generated website (it's backed by an NGO), we felt we best review Powerofone.co.za as well because it does seem to offer some nice features for various groups of society.

Of course there is a definite commercial side to this campaign which we feel isn't in keeping with the spirit of most other websites reviewed here, but the surveys they feature on the site may be of use to some companies looking to better understand potential customers.

It's also nice to see the addition of video content on their website - a nice way for visitors to this website to feel like they're participating in a truly web-based product.

The cynic in me wants to shy away from this website because of the commercial element, however we all felt we needed to give thumbs up to this NGO for at least trying to do something. Who knows, they may be more successful than most in mobilising support for their campaign.

We couldn't find any of the usual Eskom load shedding content, so the average man in the street may be found wanting on this website. However the news of an upcoming concert in support of the campaign shows us this campaign is going somewhere at least, so hats off to them all the same.

Power Outage Warning System

A bare-bones website giving you load shedding information for your suburb as per Eskom's schedules. It remains to be seen, of course, how closely Eskom will stick to these times when the system is under strain again.

It also allows you to subscribe to a mailing list service which sends you your schedule "each time the load shedding stage changes", but we're not sure how many mails you may land up receiving a day if you sign-up for this service.

Nothing new from this page, but it's simple and easy to use.

Poweroutages.co.za

This website isn't particularly exciting or well designed (the black writing on the brown background is hard to read) and it appears mostly interested in punting a product which will help you save energy at home (which is not a bad thing in the greater scheme of things) so it's main focus isn't on power-saving tips or tricks for visitors.

It mostly links to other power-saving websites and Wikipedia articles. Not much keeping us interested on this page.

Loadwatch.co.za

This website has a nice design to it, and features news on the power crisis and power outage updates. There's not much more to the content side of this website though - most of it is devoted to getting you to sign up for the e-mails or telling your friends about the service.

What we really did like though was the Widget's they've designed for your website or blog. You can copy and paste the code necessary to embed this widget on your page, and it will keep you informed of what the power situation in the country is on your website, based on the information coming in from PowerAlert.co.za.

The widget is probably one of our favourite website features we've come across since starting these reviews, and - provided the widget keeps working - it a great addition to your blog or website.

Powersaving.co.za

This site gave a very good first impression - the design is clean and simple, the content looks useful and it doesn't just regurgitate Eskom schedules and power statuses.

The content here is very useful. There's information on how much power you use for various household appliances, tips on how best to save electricity and interesting information on alternative sources of energy (as well as links to companies that can help you set up your home to be more energy-efficient).

Examples of some of the nifty facts we discovered on this site include:

You can install a wind turbine to power your home

Our verdict? We loved this website purely because we felt like we had learnt something from it! The list of suppliers per product and service also looks very useful!

Got a power crisis-related website you'd like us to review? Tell us about it, and we'll add it to the list!

 

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