
Show HN: Mac toolbar app to show electricity cutoff schedule - mhasbini
https://mhasbini.com/blog/introducing-electricity-cutoff-app.html
======
harel
This is stark reminder that we should not take our privileges for granted. We
don't think about continuous stream of power through our plugs as a privilege
(or at all) but it's not trivial, considering so many might have the latest
macbook but not always the power to run it (and to even more people the idea
of owning a computer is on the same level as flying to Jupiter).

~~~
Cthulhu_
Walking the dog last night I did wonder, what would it be like if our street
lights just stopped working? Not that unrealistic a scenario; I mean our
electricity network is pretty solid, but a power outage is a matter of when,
not if.

Should double check my flashlights.

~~~
uxp100
My street lights went out a few years ago. Really a beautiful night, great to
experience true darkness in a city. OTOH, walking around was a bit
treacherous, sidewalks are not as flat as you think.

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beilabs
We had a similar app in Kathmandu. City cut of power to certain zones on an
hourly basis, the app helped tracked the powers eventual return and pending
cutoff. The amount of activity in the neighborhood when the power comes back
on, screams of Batti Aiyo could be heard all around. Turns out it was entirely
preventable and that it was all due to an enormous amount of corruption
between the Nepalese Energy authority and factories around the country. One
guy came into the authority and changed it all for the better and brought all
the corruption into the open. Definitely made living here just that much
easier.

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Scapeghost
In my decrepit corner of the third world we call it "loadshedding"
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_blackout](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_blackout))

It's been a fact of life here as long as I've been alive and there is no
indication that it'll improve in my lifetime either.

Even now as I type this there has been no electricity for 1 hour and won't be
until another hour. There are about four 2-3 hour blackouts every day
throughout the year.

We have always had to schedule every technology-related activity around it.
When I was a kid, if there was a blackout during our favorite TV show, we had
to go to someone else's house that had electricity or a generator.

We scramble to finish chores that rely on electricity when there's a blackout
imminent. Of course there are always random unscheduled blackouts too so you
can't really predict them.

Even now in almost 2020, almost every person here has a smartphone and quite a
few have Macs etc but we still don't have 24/7 electricity. Almost every
middle class house has their own generator and solar/UPS system.

I've never been able to participate in online groups or activities like
gaming, collaboration or freelancing for long because of this (on top of
unreliable internet too), because I can't expect people in better countries to
re-accommodate their schedules around my periods of forced downtime.

~~~
azinman2
Where do you live?

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tibbydudeza
"We actually have a whole market of private large generators owners that sell
you electricity to mitigate this."

Do they use the existing municipal infrastructure or do they need to lay new
cables ???.

We have rotational 2 hourly load shedding on bad days here in South Africa as
our state owned power company has no spare capacity and the power stations are
old so they tend to break down often.

Our local FTH internet provider discovered the first time that happened after
fiber rollout in our area when all their ONT's went online at the same time
asking for authentication.

It was clear they never planned for this.

~~~
netsharc
I'm guessing they put a generator per building, and if you pay them, they'll
wire your unit up to the generator? Probably split the cabling after the meter
(you wouldn't want the municipal meter to be counting power you're buying
privately) and allow for a 2nd set of cables as input, with a big switch to
toggle between the two.

~~~
jek0
There's one privately owned generator in the neighborhood with cables running
to each buildings.

[https://browse.startpage.com/do/show_picture.pl?l=english&ra...](https://browse.startpage.com/do/show_picture.pl?l=english&rais=1&oiu=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailystar.com.lb%2F%2Fdailystar%2FPictures%2F2019%2F03%2F16%2F734293_img650x420_img650x420_crop.jpg&sp=24d278f526e42ded4d077f122ebe032c&t=default)

The owner sells a fixed monthly fee per 5 amp, so there are individual
breakers for each apartment.

[https://www.alamy.com/detail-from-a-wall-electric-cables-
and...](https://www.alamy.com/detail-from-a-wall-electric-cables-and-fuses-in-
the-open-beirut-lebanon-image280512641.html)

Notice the "green light" in the picture. This is to inform people in the
neighborhood that it's "generator's electricity", so they cannot use washing
mashing and water heaters.

The cable from the generator reaches the house after the meter, there's an
automatic switch to take current from the generator only when there's no
electricity from the government.

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ronyfadel
On that note: there are currently massive anti-government protests happening
throughout Lebanon, against rampant corruption in the establishment, which is
behind the broken electricity sector (amongst others).

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/23/world/middleeast/lebanon-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/23/world/middleeast/lebanon-
protests.html)

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burtonator
Hello from California where we're one of the world's largest economies and
still have electricity cutoffs.

Thanks, Pacific Graft and Extortion!

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ohazi
Anyone want to make this work in California with the PG&E schedule?

~~~
master-litty
I do but, silly thought first, would there be any legal liability in doing so?

It's such a sensitive political subject, I can't help but wonder if a third
party app that fails to report outages properly could get in trouble.

~~~
londons_explore
Legal liability getting in the way of doing good things will be part of the
USA's downfall. A million tiny cuts...

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peterburkimsher
I needed something like this when I was in India for 5 months! Except there
was no generator, so I'd just sleep my laptop when it ran out of battery. At
least I didn't try using a desktop.

I was interested in monitoring it at the time, so I wrote SMC voltmeter, an
app to measure the input voltage. If you're interested in auto-detecting the
power source to your laptop, my open-source code might be useful, so please
give it a look!

[https://hackaday.com/2015/04/21/reading-analog-values-
with-a...](https://hackaday.com/2015/04/21/reading-analog-values-with-a-
magsafe-port/)

------
londons_explore
If I lived here, I would fit an Arduino and a bunch of SSR's to my electrical
breaker box.

The Arduino would detect use of the generator, and detect load on the
generator (with a current clamp), and if the load was too high, start shedding
power-hungry devices like electric heaters, driers, ovens, etc.

The order of switch off would be programmable, and some devices like fridges
or heaters could be programmed to only run on utility power to save money.

Total hardware cost of $30 would pay for itself quickly in both saved
generation bills as well as a better quality of life, and the design/build
cost of a few days would easily be recouped by selling devices to all my
neighbours.

~~~
ronyfadel
Turn fridge and heaters off? How do then keep food fresh, or heat homes? It’s
not how it works, in Lebanon you pay the generator “company” a monthly fee
independent of your consumption, but dependent on max amperage you wish to
get. The electricity already cuts off (circuit breaker) if you go beyond it
(e.g. use a hairdryer). Some people “cheat” that system by pouring saline into
the circuit breaker causing it to rust from the inside, this it would never
break.

~~~
hokumguru
The average refrigerator is insulated enough to keep food fresh for a moderate
amount of time - provided the door remains shut.

How that shutoff affects the compressor is a different story, however.

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pandizzle
South Africa also has rolling blackouts every few months. We have apps to
notify us when it'll happen on our phones. A lot of us have accepted it as
normal by now.

~~~
mikorym
Yup, only trouble is the app says "stage 3 loadshedding" and then your power
is on. The next day the app says "no loadshedding" and hey look, the power is
off.

This varies a bit, in rural areas it can be much worse, but often the
municipalities are the culprits there. Even in some JHB suburbs you are never
quite sure if it is the muni or loadshedding, but recently I have noticed that
the FB hordes somehow manage to sniff out the exact transformer that failed...

------
mikorym
This would have been useful in South Africa if that key assumption "thankfully
the cut-off are almost always on schedule" had held.

EDIT: We still have apps though. It's just a mystery sometimes when your power
is on and the app says "STAGE 4 LOADSHEDDING [U R SCREWED]" and strangely the
power is still on. The converse is more annoying of course.

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djbelieny
You could get something like an iotawatt hooked up to your wifi with CT
sensors on your mains breaker and get live readings of your power usage as
well as "sense" when the power changes from Public to Diesel Gen.
[https://iotawatt.com/](https://iotawatt.com/)

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londons_explore
How does this work? Do you have two feeds into your house, one from the power
grid and one from the generator-grid? Did the generator company lay new power
lines to every house?

Or do you lease the generator and run it in your garage, but the generator
maker somehow bills you for power consumed rather than just running hours?

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omarish
Fellow Lebanese(-American) here. This is awesome. Thanks for creating and
sharing it.

~~~
swampthing
Funny, I have a habit of reading HN comments before clicking on the actual
link, and thought the link would be about the planned outages here in the SF
bay area :)

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sundvor
That's akin to a cry out for a Powerwall plus solar panel setup!

~~~
gwbas1c
The limiting factor is manufacturing capacity. Tesla limits where they sell
Powerwalls and solar roofs because they can't make them fast enough to meet
nationwide (or worldwide) demand.

~~~
ronyfadel
It’s also inconvenient for the generator mafia in Lebanon to have people
generate their own electricity.

