{"id":621388,"date":"2025-12-04T13:59:37","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T11:59:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=621388"},"modified":"2025-12-04T14:00:28","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T12:00:28","slug":"big-updates-and-changes-for-eskomsepush","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/energy\/621388-big-updates-and-changes-for-eskomsepush.html","title":{"rendered":"Big updates and changes for EskomSePush"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

EskomSePush (ESP) has released significant updates and changes in 2025 to remain relevant to communities in South Africa, with load-shedding having all but disappeared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ESP co-founder Herman Maritz told MyBroadband that 2025 had been a strange year to run a load-shedding app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There have been only eight days of load-shedding in 2025, compared with 68 days in 2024 and 284 days in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, he and fellow founder Dan Southwood-Wells are not hoping for the power cuts to return. “We never set out to build a tool that depends on South Africa suffering,” he said<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The breathing room afforded by the load-shedding reprieve has allowed the team to continue the app’s pivot towards an interactive community notice board and support system centred around ESP Chats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With ESP Version 5, the app was quietly rewired around actual suburbs and areas rather than legacy load-shedding blocks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Load-shedding still works exactly the same, but now your schedule, local chats and outage reports all live under the same place name: the place you actually live, work and complain about,” Maritz said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the advantages of using ESP Chats over other popular apps, such as WhatsApp and Telegram, include your phone number remaining private and the absence of moderator “despots”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“In the background, AI does the first-pass moderation and summarises so you don’t have to scroll through 300 ‘I’m looking for a job’ replies,” Maritz said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By adapting the product to everyday local life so that others can share info and build connections even when it’s inconvenient, the app has built up a large and loyal following outside of load-shedding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“On quiet days without load-shedding, ESP sits at around 300,000 daily users, which we’re very chuffed about,” Maritz said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Big local weather events, and water or electricity outages can push the average to roughly 500,000 daily users.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A notable example was the Pretoria East outage on 18 February 2025, where an explosion at the Njala substation triggered a surge in ESP traffic and local video uploads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Traffic down \u2014 but engagement surges<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t<\/button>
Screenshots from the EskomSePush app <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

On the Google Play Store alone, total ESP downloads increased from 8.8 million at the start of 2025 to 9.8 million in early December 2025. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also boasts a commendable 4.69 rating based on over 230,000 reviews. “We still see tens of thousands of new installs every month,” Maritz said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The highest number of users ESP saw during the year was 3.2 million in February, when stage 6 load-shedding briefly returned. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although user traffic has calmed down significantly, Maritz said current users were more deeply engaged in local chats and outage threads. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We’re seeing more first-time chatters and more replies being marked as helpful, which suggests people aren’t just lurking; they’re actually helping each other,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“ESP Chats is now the default way people check on any local issue: electricity faults, water interruptions, load reduction, fibre cuts, dead traffic lights, you name it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In terms of new features and enhancements, ESP is working on the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  • Richer Area Pages or “area Wikipedias”<\/strong> \u2014 One page per suburb for load-shedding, load reduction, municipal faults, and key local events.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Better maps and context <\/strong>\u2014 Enabling users to see who else nearby is affected, not just when they are personally affected. <\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Service Delivery Insights <\/strong>\u2014 Simple user-friendly statistics page showing how often an area has unplanned outages, how long they tend to last, and how things are changing over time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    ESP also plans to open source some of its map data so others can build “cool stuff,” Maritz said. “Our crowdsourced outage API with the map data is now a meaningful part of the business.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    He also said that they would keep expanding the app so utilities and businesses can react faster when things break.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Maritz said that the year had proved there was a real need for accurate, local, community-driven information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    “Our job now is to keep ESP\u00a0useful, fast and friendly\u00a0in that world with less panic\u00a0and more ‘I know what’s going on, and I know my neighbours have my back’,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    EskomSePush has continued to record hundreds of thousands of active users daily, despite load-shedding being nearly non-existent. Co-founder Herman Maritz recently explained to MyBroadband how it has adapted and thrived.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":430226,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27995],"tags":[81859,58380,81857,102492,68562,8487,24030,93219],"class_list":["post-621388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-dan-southwood-wells","tag-eskomsepush","tag-eskomsepush-esp","tag-fibre-outages","tag-herman-maritz","tag-load-shedding","tag-power-cuts","tag-water-outages"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621388"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=621388"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":621611,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621388\/revisions\/621611"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}