Barra, Emma, Ophelia, Darwin…some of the more memorable Irish storms in recent years. Storm season can mean fallen power lines, a delay in planned maintenance and, ultimately, disruption to electricity supply.

In the era of remote-first working, ESB Networks is under even more pressure to keep their customers informed so they can minimise the impact on their day.

Enter PowerCheck. It’s the application that provides the public, businesses & the media with real-time fault information on all major electricity faults across Ireland.

In 2020, the ESB Networks team identified that PowerCheck needed new functionalities, so we worked alongside them and their development partners to create a user-friendly, intuitive application that was accessible for all.

Delving into analytics highlighted that over 88% of users access PowerCheck on their mobile devices. This makes sense as most people in a power outage may be relying on their mobile data to access the internet resulting in thousands of users trying to access Powercheck at the same time.

From the get go, the ESB Networks team were very cognisant of keeping the user at the centre of every decision as otherwise their call centres might experience surges in demand when people lose power.

We ran nationwide user testing to gather opinions from residential, commercial and farm customers to ensure the design answered their needs when their power went out, therefore reducing the pressure on the call centre.

While the application is constantly evolving in line with user needs, the PowerCheck application is now live and ready to guide Irish people through the next storm season.