The Gridwatch app, which is arguably among the best loadshedding apps currently available, has reached cracked the top five rankings on the App Store just two days after launch on iTunes.

Developed by News24’s parent company 24.com, Gridwatch was launched as a mobi-site on February 5th and a free Android app was released later that same month. The iOS version launched last Thursday and sits at number four on the top free apps rank, just behind the likes of WhatsApp.

Users can get Eskom and municipal loadshedding updates by searching for locations and saving them on Gridwatch. You can also report power faults directly and incorrect schedules to News24 through the app.

“We’ve built the biggest loadshedding database in South Africa,” said Cathryn Reece, head of product development at 24.com, . “The Eskom schedules are disaggregated across municipalities which meant that South Africans struggled to find their local and national schedules and to plan for outages.”

24.com also revealed that both Gridwatch apps have 340 000 daily users cumulatively viewing the app over two million times a day.

“As a nation, we’ve had to accept that the reality of load-shedding is here to stay for a while. News24 developed Gridwatch to help South Africans plan as much as possible around this very disruptive challenge,2 said Lisa MacLeod, 24.com general manager of digital publishing.

“We will continue to focus on developing technology that meets today’s information needs and to keep it accessible and accurate,” she added.

[Main image – Google Play]