When load shedding came back to Ghana, the official schedule existed — but barely anyone could read it. It was a PDF table, shared as a screenshot on WhatsApp, passed phone to phone, impossible to search. We built something to fix that. What happened next surprised us.
The problem with the schedule
The Electricity Company of Ghana publishes a load shedding timetable that assigns different areas to different groups, with each group rotating through power-off windows across the week. On paper, a reasonable system. In practice, most people had no idea which group they were in, and the only way to find out was to decode a table that looked like it was designed for engineers, not residents.
Screenshots of that table flooded social media every time a new schedule dropped. People would zoom in, squint, try to find their area, lose their place, and give up. Planning around power cuts — charging devices, scheduling meetings, making sure the generator had fuel — was harder than it needed to be.
What we built
The ECG Load Shedding Checker is deliberately simple: type in your area, see your group's schedule for the week, and know exactly when your power is expected to go off and come back. That's it.
We built a searchable database covering areas, estates, schools, and landmarks — because most people don't know which abstract group they're in, but they do know the name of their neighbourhood. We also added browser push notifications and SMS alerts so users can opt in to a reminder roughly an hour before their power is due to go off.
What 54,000 users taught us
The app grew almost entirely through word of mouth. Someone would use it, find it worked, and send the link to their family group chat. That pattern repeated until 54,000 people had used it — without us spending a single cedi on advertising.
- Simplicity compounds. The app does one thing well. That made it easy to explain in a single sentence, which made it easy to share.
- The problem was urgent. People weren't searching for a nice-to-have. Apps that solve urgent, specific problems spread faster than apps that solve vague, general ones.
- Notifications are the retention mechanic. Users who opted into alerts came back. The reminder creates a repeated moment of value — every time it fires before a scheduled outage, it reinforces that the app works.
The bigger picture
Sometimes the most useful thing you can build is a clean interface on top of information that already exists but isn't accessible. The value isn't in the data — it's in making the data usable for the person who needs it.
The ECG checker is still live and actively used. Try it at ecgtimetable.augtechghsolutions.com.