Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Petrol Prices Melbourne alert web app now available.

Recently I was driving along and noticed a petrol station with what looked like a ridiculous price. It was so much more expensive than any other petrol station. I thought perhaps the price was going up, but when I didn't see any other petrol stations with a similar price, I thought perhaps I was mistaken.

The next time I was out and about the price of petrol had increased about 20 cents a litre. Just a day or two and it can cost an additional $10 for a tankful of petrol. This made me curious. The following is a graph of the daily average petrol price recently for Melbourne.

You can see from the graph the cycle is currently around three weeks with a shift upwards for each of the cycles. The price difference from the lowest to the highest around 20-25 cents. It only takes around 3-5 days for the average price in Melbourne to go from the lowest to the peak. Keep in mind whilst the average across Melbourne may take 3-5 days, for a particular petrol station the price will simply change over night. There may still be areas around Melbourne with lower prices, but they may or may not be close enough for you to take advantage of them.

Now we could all check the daily prices every day, but that is time consuming for everyone. I felt if a group of us could simply keep an eye on the prices and if one of us noticed the price hike, they could let everyone know. Those needing petrol could fill up shortly after. No monitoring sites everyday and only one person having to let everyone know every few weeks.

I enjoy writing small web apps, so for me it made sense to write a web app our family and friends could use to let each other know the petrol price had spiked. Since the web app is on the internet anyone can also do the same for their family and friends. Share your alert using an email, Facebook our Twitter.

You can find the Petrol Prices Melbourne alert web app at www.PetrolPricesMelbourne.com.au.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au