Tidewatt — Product Brief (Jamaica-first)

Category: Household electricity survival (JPS) One-line: Weather for *your* light bill — so prepaid does not die at 2 a.m. and nobody has to trust a “cheap electricity” website. MAIN launch feature: Bill Truth + Credit Watch — photograph a JPS bill or prepaid receipt, see what actually ate the money on *this* paper, and get a same-week plan to keep the light on. Tidewatt never takes a JPS payment.

Works in Jamaica by design. Residential JPS is not California time-of-use. We do not pretend it is.

Phase 1 — Problem Discovery & Analysis

Pain point (Jamaica, with evidence)

Electricity on the island is expensive, politically hot, and already a scam magnet (“pay your bill at this link”).

• A large share of a JPS bill is fuel. JPS has publicly described fuel as about 40% of the bill; the official fuel rate is published monthly (e.g. J$27.738/kWh for a June 2026 billing window on JPS’s own payment page) (JPS Payment & Billing).
• Residential Rate 10 is an energy charge plus customer charge, IPP, fuel, and tax — not a default time-of-use clock. TOU peak/partial/off-peak windows in the published schedule attach to commercial/industrial classes (Rate 40/50/70), not to the ordinary household (JPS rate schedule; OUR annual filings).
• Prepaid / Pay As You Go is the control product JPS has been pushing (pilot 2015; parish-wide 2016; ~15,000 active prepaid in early 2023 with a public target to scale toward 100,000) (Gleaner). Prepaid customers top up, watch remaining kWh, and still get surprised when credit evaporates after AC + iron + fridge on a hot week.
• Government moved residential GCT on electricity to 7% from 1 May 2025 for post-paid *and* prepaid — proof that bill pain is a national issue, not a lifestyle app (JIS).
• Fake and unofficial “pay here” pages are a known local fear. A product that collects bill money will be treated as a thief. Merchants and consumers already flinch at new digital rails over fraud and chargebacks (Jamaica Observer, transaction paralysis).
• STATIN CPI (user-supplied official bulletins) is now the rate-of-change evidence. In July 2024 the All-Jamaica index was 137.5 (+0.8% month, +5.1% point-to-point). The group *Electricity, Gas and Other Fuels* was 140.4, −0.1% on the month (STATIN: lower electricity rates) but +5.6% point-to-point (STATIN: higher electricity rates plus rentals). Two months later, September 2024, All-Jamaica fell 0.2%, primarily because *Housing, Water, Electricity, Gas and Other Fuels* dropped 4.0% after *Electricity, Gas and Other Fuels* fell 13.4% — again, reduced electricity rates. Point-to-point inflation was still 5.7%. (STATIN CPI July 2024, released 15 Aug 2024; STATIN CPI September 2024, released 15 Oct 2024.)
• STATIN IMTS Jan–Jun 2024: merchandise imports US$3,687.4 million; *Mineral fuels* US$995.5 million (June alone US$211.8 million); end-use *Fuels and Lubricants* US$988.5 million. The island still imports the fuel that becomes the JPS line. (STATIN IMTS Vol. 14 Issue 06, 30 Oct 2024.)

The pain is not “I want to be a grid operator.” It is: the light cannot cut when the baby is asleep, the official electricity index can move more than ten percent in a month, and I will not type my JPS account password into a pretty new site.

Market gap

JPS’s own app/portal and Paymaster / Bill Express already take money. Sense-style monitors are a Kingston-hobbyist slice. US TOU weather apps are lying about the tariff.

The gap: truth on this month’s paper + a prepaid-won’t-die plan, with zero payment collection.

Current solutions and limitations

Emerging technology enablers

• On-device bill/receipt OCR (JPS layouts, Pay As You Go vouchers).
• A Jamaica tariff table we maintain from OUR/JPS public PDFs (fuel rate updates monthly) — not a live JPS login.
• Optional later: smart plugs that are common in wholesale (not a US hub).
• PWA + SMS/WhatsApp low-credit warning the household opted into.

No blockchain. A “JPS coin” is a scam with extra steps.

Phase 2 — Expert Lenses

Einstein — first principles

Assumption we kill: *households will shift load against a TOU clock.*

First principles in Jamaica: the scarce resource is credit and comfort, not a peak/off-peak ratio. The object is Watch { remaining_credit_or_projected_bill, loads_that_eat_it, unsafe_to_cut[], this_week_plan }. If we cannot show the arithmetic on *their* bill, we do not have a product.

Jobs — simplicity

Home screen: how many days of light at this pace, in one number, from their last photo. One button: What to do this week (iron in daylight, AC hours, fridge door, “pay at Paymaster — not here”). If they have no smart devices, the plan is still three sentences.

Csikszentmihalyi — flow

A 20-second morning glance, like checking rain before you hang clothes. Not fourteen charts. Skill grows when last week’s photo matches what they felt in the house.

Lennon — radical possibility

A street that can see a shared heat week coming (without doxxing anyone’s bill) and check on the elderly neighbour whose prepaid always dies first. Civic weather for electrons — still never a payment app.

Solution overview

Tidewatt is a PWA that reads *your* JPS paper and keeps a Credit Watch.

MAIN launch feature — Bill Truth + Credit Watch

1. Photograph the post-paid bill *or* the prepaid receipt / remaining-credit screen. 2. We extract kWh, fuel line, customer charge, and (if prepaid) remaining units. User corrects any line. 3. Plain-speech truth: “Fuel is X% of this bill. At this pace, prepaid dies Thursday night.” 4. This-week tide: three actions that do not require buying hardware. Comfort locks: medical devices, baby, elder heat risk. 5. Official pay deep-link / instruction: jpsco.com, Paymaster, Bill Express, your bank — never a Tidewatt checkout. 6. Optional WhatsApp to self or to the person who tops up from abroad: “Credit low. Top up the usual way. We did not take this money.”

Unique interface

Energy weather for Jamaica: a sky that is about days-of-light left and heat, not a California peak band. Swipe to accept *this week’s* three actions.

Cross-device / PWA

• Android-first home-screen install.
• Offline: last bill math remains.
• Desktop for the shopkeeper cousin on Rate 20/40 who *does* have TOU later (phase 2, labelled as commercial).
• Manifest name: Tidewatt. Theme colour: deep sea. Footer: 876 number + “we never take JPS payments.”

Target personas

Primary — Shanice, 31, Spanish Town, prepaid

Tops up every Friday. AC for the child with asthma at night. Will photograph a voucher. Will not give a password. Sister in Florida sometimes tops up — she needs a WhatsApp warning, not a new wallet.

Secondary — Mr. Chin, 58, small shop, Half-Way-Tree (phase 2)

Rate 20/40. Actual TOU may apply. Not the MVP.

Anti-persona

Anyone who wants us to “discount JPS” or take bill payments. That is how the Gleaner writes the exposé.

Positioning

For Jamaican households watching a JPS bill or a prepaid meter, Tidewatt is Bill Truth. Unlike a foreign savings app or a fake pay site, it uses your paper, shows the fuel line, and sends you to JPS or Paymaster to pay.

Trust & anti-scam

• Forever-free bill read.
• Red-flag: “If this site asks for your JPS password or a Lynk to ‘clear your balance,’ close it.”
• No guaranteed savings percentage on the marketing site. Modeled vs. verified, always two numbers, when we ever show money.
• Tariff table sourced from public OUR/JPS documents with dates on screen.

Scores

Feasibility is high (OCR + public tariff table). Impact is national bill pain. Appeal depends on never smelling like a pay-site clone — which is why we refuse to collect money for JPS.