How hot it can be? Brainchild of Shefaly Yogendra and Ajay Kumar PowerCuts built on an Ushahidi platform is an initiative to crowdsource information about Power Cuts in India. The project aims to crowdsource, primarily from twitter and other mediums like Mobile Web, SMS, Smartphone Apps, information about the Power Cuts happening in India starting this summer. The primary aim of the website is to collect data from people and make it accessible in various formats and provide it back for public use.

It started when Shefaly Yogendra, based at London heading a boutique consulting firm that advises investors and an alumna of IIM Ahmedabad a PhD in decision-making from the University of Cambridge, saw a discussion on power cuts on her Twitter timeline and suggested to her friends, “May be you guys SHOULD tweet #powercut with location. The infographic will highlight the need for investment. To many people.”

Users had begun writing about the time and location of the power cuts in their respective areas with the hashtag #powercutindia. About 28 minutes after the initial discussion, Ajay Kumar put up a web app that had started mapping power cuts in the country on the basis of the tagged tweets. A Twitter account by the name of @PowerCutsIn has also been employed to collect data.

The data is crowd sourced and belongs to the crowd and is licensed under Public Domain Dedication and License, which means anyone is free:

#1 To Share: Copy, distribute and use the database.
#2 To Create: Produce works from the database.
#3 To Adapt: Modify, transform and build upon the database.

How to Report
#1 Send a tweet with the hashtag/s #powercutindia or #PowerCutsIN
Example #powercutindia (street, city – location name/pincode) #from (time) #planned or #unplanned (if its a scheduled load shedding or unexpected outage).
Also report with #powercutindia #back when it comes back.

#2 Fill and submit this form.

#3 App (iPhone, Android) – download the Ushahidi app add the site URL and start reporting.

Powercuts in India on Twitter