From the recent amount of loadshedding hitting the country there seems to be a flurry of services.

And it would make sense, considering how hard the offical schedules are to understand. It's a local problem and we have local programmers solving it, which gets me excited !

The problem we are starting to face is that there are so many options ... So I took some time and compiled a list of services/apps I could find online to let you know about the schedule. [IF I MISSED ANY PLEASE COMMENT BELOW SO I CAN ADD THEM TOO, THIS ALSO ONLY INCLUDES CAPE TOWN FOR NOW]

The offical resources

First up is the offical list of resources. Which give all the information and should probably be treated as the single source of truth. The schedules are a bit confusing and that's precisely the reason why new apps/services have been created.

The grid for Cape Town is devided into 2 sections.

One controlled by the Cape Town government and info/schedule can be found on their website - www.capetown.gov.za/loadshedding/.

From there you can see both the current stage:

And the table with the full schedule:

This was changed from the 1st of Feb 2015. To rather use day of the month to make the schedule more versatile for use.

The website will point you to the loadshedding.eskom.co.za site if your area is not on their schedule. On this site you can view any areas directly managed by Eskom.

Where you can just enter your suburb and get your schedule in a printable calendar form:

These schedules work for me but require a lot of mental focus to figure out if your getting loadshedding.

loadshedding.johanndutoit.net

My own first attempt at making this a little easier. Mapped out the schedules for Cape Town on a interactive map. The site did quite good with thousands of people hitting to see their schedule in a easier way.

See more at www.htxt.co.za/2014/06/13/load-shedding-in-cape-town-an-interactive-map-of-where-and-when/ for a small history of the project.

Along with a TV interview from Tech Report ZA:

The site was moved to a actual once the schedule changed. Bringing me to my next one:

loadshed.org

From the loadshedding map I built this service that pushes the loadshedding schedule per SMS to your phone as soon as the stage changes.

And also uses the data I managed to curate from the interactive map to show you full schedules for zones:

This is currently my "daily driver" but I may be a biased so try them all out and decide what you like !

EWN Loadshedding

EWN made a awesome schedule that you can have a look at to interactively view the areas on the map and the affected area codes:

Load Shed Android app

When looking in the Google Play store this is the first app that you find for loadshedding and it seems with good reason.

Tried it myself quickly and worked great. Try it out and let me know what you think.

The reviews are quite good to, on average, too:

loadsheddingapp.co.za

Was reffered to the website while chatting on a Slack group named #startup.

Slick design for a Android app and seems they are almost at release. Looking forward to this one myself.

wherestheload.com

Found the site from Reddit. The service emails you the loadshedding schedule and displays the current information on the site itself.

Built by TroubleShootr who seem to be a awesome a local dev house.

FIN

Hope this helps a few people find apps to help them. If I missed any or have some info wrong please do shout in the comments and I'll fix as fast as I can.