Using Technology to Fight Power Outages

GridWatch is a mobile app that changes how you interact with your utility company. It allows for easy reporting and tracking of power outages and holds utility companies accountable for the service they provide.

Beta test the App!

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Report Power Outages

GridWatch lets you alert your power company of a power outage with a single button.

The faster your utility company knows about your outage, the faster they can fix it!

Automatically Sense Outages

If the power goes out when your phone is charging GridWatch will sense the outage and automatically notify your power company. You have total control over the data collected to ensure your privacy is preserved.

Gather Data

Anonymized data gathered by GridWatch will be made publically available very soon. This helps consumers learn about the quality of service they receive, researchers learn about how the power grid works and utility companies better serve their customers.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

GridWatch System Diagram
A plugged-in phone changes from a powered state to an unpowered state with grid failure. GridWatch registers this event, verifies that it is not a likely false positive, and reports the event to a central service for analysis, export, and visualization.


Read Our HotMobile 2014 Paper

This is the first GridWatch publication. It describes many of the key ideas of the project.

Read Our Siebel Energy Institute Grant Abstract

We are happy to have received a $50K grant from the Siebel Energy Institute. This abstract describes the goals of the project moving forward.

Checkout Our GitHub Repo

Checkout the project GitHub if you want to dive into the code itself. GridWatch is very much still in active development and has not yet had a stable non-beta release.

CONTACT US


gridwatchdev@gmail.com
GridWatch is a collaboration between The University of Michigan Lab11 and The University of California Berkeley DIL.