Track power outages in real time across the US with the Ting app

There’s a new, free tool to help Americans monitor power outages in real time. Compiling data from its vast network of home sensors, startup Whisker Labs is launching the feature today in its Ting app.

You don’t actually need to have one of these sensors in your home to use the Ting app to track a power outage. Whisker Labs, which shared the announcement first with The Verge, says it is the only app to offer immediate outage alerts at such a hyperlocal level across the US.

The tool could help fill in the blanks for folks wondering whether they can return to a home with power after an outage or related disaster. With weather-related blackouts more prevalent now than in the past, utilities are struggling to turn the lights back on and keep customers updated at the same time.

The service is based on a network of 1.1 million homes across the US that have installed a Whisker Labs sensor, also called Ting, meant to prevent electrical fires. The sensor detects micro-arcing or sparking, perhaps the result of faulty wiring or a malfunctioning device. Whisker Labs CEO Bob Marshall cofounded the company after his sister-in-law lost her home to an electrical fire. The sensor is primarily meant to give residents enough advance warning that they take action to stop that arcing from becoming a full-blown fire.

Until now, the Ting app was limited to people using the sensor to monitor a particular property. The app had the added bonus of notifying users if the power went out at the location where they installed the sensor. But after hearing how useful the app’s power outage notifications were to Whisker Labs’ customers and their neighbors, the company decided to revamp the app to make that service accessible to anyone regardless of whether or not they have the sensor installed.

Now, the Ting App, which is available on Apple’s App Store and Google Play, includes an interactive national outage map for the US. In the app, users can search for and save an address to see if there’s an outage affecting that area, and crucially, whether power has returned.

Marshall said there happens to be a Ting sensor installed within a mile of roughly 95 percent of homes across the US. Each sensor takes 30 million electrical measurements per second — fast enough to notice voltage dropping and shoot off a signal to warn that the home is about to lose power before it actually happens. When Whisker Labs loses data from multiple sensors at the same time, it can tell there’s a power outage affecting a broader community.

In the aftermath of widespread outages caused by Hurricane Beryl in Texas last year, “We had customers telling us that they were the information source for their friends and families and community to know when their neighborhood had power again,” Marshall says. Beryl was also when many people reportedly turned to the Whataburger app as a makeshift power outage map because it showed which locations were open again after the storm.

In my own reporting on disasters, I’ve heard from folks who hunkered down in their homes during power outages and became the main source of information for neighbors who’d evacuated and needed to know when they could return. After Hurricane Ida left New Orleans residents without power in 2021, residents said a local utility’s glitchy maps showed that power was restored in their neighborhood even when that wasn’t necessarily the case on the ground. I’ve also used PowerOutage.us to keep track of large blackouts across the US, but that also relies on data from utilities and doesn’t zoom in as closely as the Ting app does. So I can see how helpful it might be to have another option out there to use.

After all, climate change is hitting aging power grids with increasingly extreme weather. The US experienced 60 percent more weather-related outages during the summer months over the past decade than it did during the 2000s, according to a report published last year. “Major events” including hurricanes and winter storms have led to more prolonged blackouts in the US, data from the US Energy Information Administration similarly shows. Residents experienced an average of 5.5 hours of electricity interruptions in 2022, compared to around 3.5 hours in 2013.

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