Lala Power Updates

Text alerts telling you when Hawaiian Electric reports an outage at an address you chose, and when it stops reporting one. Run by Supersistence LLC, Honolulu. Sign up at lala.supersistence.org, Power tab.

Terms of service

What the service does

You give a street address (or drop a pin on the map) and your own mobile number. Every few minutes we check the outage maps published by HECO, MECO and HELCO. When an outage area covers your address we text you once; when it no longer does, we text you once more. That is the whole service. It is free.

Message frequency and cost

Up to two messages per outage, per address. One number may watch up to five addresses. Message and data rates may apply — that is between you and your carrier; we charge nothing.

Stopping, and getting help

Reply STOP to any message, or use the “Stop texts” button on the signup form. Either deletes every address stored for your number, immediately. Reply HELP, or email hunter@supersistence.org, for help.

What this is not

This is not an emergency service and must not be relied on for life safety. We read a utility's public outage map; we cannot see your meter, and “power is back” means only that their map no longer covers your address. Delivery is not guaranteed and can be delayed — carrier email-to-SMS gateways in particular have delivered our messages hours late. For emergencies use 911; for official notices use the City and County of Honolulu's alerts.

We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or speaking for Hawaiian Electric, HECO, MECO, HELCO or KIUC. Kauaʻi is not covered: KIUC publishes outage points rather than service areas, so no address there can be matched to one.

Changes

If these terms change materially we will say so on the signup form. Continuing to receive messages after that is acceptance; STOP always ends it.

Privacy policy

What we store

• Your mobile number, in E.164 form.
• The coordinates of the address you gave, or of the pin you dropped.
• A label for that place — the matched street address, or whatever you typed if you used the map. Use the map and a nickname and your street address is never stored at all.
• Your carrier, if you picked one, which decides how the message is delivered.
• The time you signed up, and which outage you were last seen inside, so we do not text you the same thing twice.

Nothing else. No name, no email, no account, no cookies set by us, no analytics or advertising trackers on the signup form.

What we do with it

Send you those two texts. Nothing is sold, rented, shared or used for marketing, and we do not build profiles. Your number is never shown to other users.

Who else sees it

• The address you type goes to the US Census Bureau's geocoder and, if that finds nothing, to OpenStreetMap's Nominatim, to be turned into coordinates. Your phone number is never sent to either. Use the map pin and neither one is contacted.
• Your number and the message go to whoever delivers it: Google Workspace and your carrier's email-to-SMS gateway, or Twilio.
• Cloudflare hosts the site and stores the record.

How long we keep it

Every record deletes itself 45 days after signup, automatically. STOP or the “Stop texts” button deletes it immediately. There is no archive of subscribers, and phone numbers are never written to the project's public data, its code repository, or its logs — logs show only the last four digits.

Asking us

Email hunter@supersistence.org to ask what is stored for your number or to have it deleted. Deleting is also the one thing you can do yourself at any time, from the form, without asking anyone.

Supersistence LLC · 2861 Komaia Place, Honolulu, HI 96822 · hunter@supersistence.org · supersistence.org