How it’s built
A short, honest look under the hood.
Is The Power Out? started as a simple idea: when the lights go out, people want one place to see whether their neighbors are out too, and when it is coming back. So I built it.
The stack
It runs on Next.js and Postgres, with a live map (MapLibre), pulls in real outage and weather data, and is hosted on my own hardware. No page builder, no template. I wrote it.
Clustering the reports
When a few people report an outage around the same time and place, the site groups them into a single outage covering the affected area, instead of a scatter of lonely pins. Separate outages on the same night stay separate.
The outage lifecycle
Every outage moves through stages, emerging, confirmed, restoring, restored, and the map color tracks it the whole way. Utilities can claim an outage and post an estimated restoration time, and the affected zone sweeps green the moment power returns.
Keeping it clean
Reports run through a moderation pass before they go public, so the map stays trustworthy without me sitting on it all day.
This is the kind of thing I build. If you need a site or a tool, here is how to reach me.