Yes I know the EskomSePush mobile apps will give either a 15 minute or 55 minute warning ahead of the scheduled load shedding window for a zone area in South Africa, but sometimes you need a custom time alert eg. 23 minutes, or you want it to announce it over your smart speakers, or to add other conditions.
The now ever-changing load shedding schedule in South Africa has started to make things pretty complicated to plan around. If it was just fixed at say Stage 4 or 5 then we’d all know what we’re doing when (or not doing). But too many cakes are now flopping.
EskomSePush has been rising up as one of the most dependable load schedule apps in South Africa, and they have an API that can be used too. The API is free to use for up to 50 requests per day. The API allows easy integration with something like Home Assistant (or even a Python or other app you want to create).
I’ve tested two integrations, and whilst the first one was a bit more manual, the one linked below is way easier to get going with. Yes, you do still need to get your free API code, but the Home Assistant integration has a wizard that will guide you on the process.
The only thing you then really have to do is to create your dashboard cards. I copied the examples they have on the GitHub project. Note though that one entity is called with ‘cape-town’ in it’s name, and it needs to be ‘capetown’ if you are in the Cape Town area. And the code example uses a Joburg area name, so that also just needs to be changed to what ever your area is. And then you can have fun with it.
I’m just displaying the upcoming schedule with the time to the next load shedding, and have set up an audible alert before load shedding starts, so we can turn the shower hot water on if required. But another option is to even send an alert to a Telegram group, so you can have a lot of neighbours subscribing to your Telegram channel for early warnings. Another idea is to check the duration of the upcoming load shedding slot, and give a different warning for the 4-hour ones. The options are endless!!
The audible alert though over the Google Home speakers is working really well, as it alerts everyone in the house about the impending start of the load shedding, and it is quite easy to just adjust that warning time period under Automations in Home Assistant. We now just totally rely on hearing this alert during the day. I’ve also subscribed to EskomSePush to support them as the API has been very useful to us.
See https://github.com/wernerhp/ha.integration.load_shedding
You can also see what all I’m doing with my own Home Assistant at https://github.com/Danie10/gadgeteerza-homeassistant
#technology #SouthAfrica #loadshedding #EskomSePush #HomeAssistant