This reference ranks every state and the District of Columbia by how long the average electricity customer was without power each year from 2013 to 2025. It is built from 13,155 utility reliability records in the U.S. Energy Information Administration's Form EIA-861 and 3,876 DOE-417 electric disturbance reports. No values are estimated or imputed.
The full dataset is published openly: US Power Outage Burden by State, 2013–2025 (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23548861, CC BY 4.0). You can also download the state table as CSV.
Key findings
- Maine had the most outage time: an average of 1,063.4 minutes (about 17.7 hours) per customer per year, followed by Louisiana (988.6) and West Virginia (815.6).
- Fewest outage minutes: District of Columbia 75.0, Arizona 93.3, Nevada 113.1, Delaware 138.4 and North Dakota 152.1 (13-year averages).
- 2024 was the worst year in the series: 611.3 minutes (about 10.2 hours) per customer nationally, 2.8× the 2013 level of 215.7. 2024's top states were South Carolina (3,137), Maine (1,749), North Carolina (1,441), Florida (1,321) and Texas (1,271).
- Worst single state-year: Louisiana 2021, at 4,811 minutes (about 80 hours).
- Routine reliability is slipping: outage minutes excluding major event days rose from 105.5 (2013) to 120.9 (2025), +14.6%. 33 of 51 jurisdictions had a higher 2023–25 average than their 2013–15 average.
- Storms drive much of the total: across all state-years, major event days account for a median 46.7% of outage minutes. Day-to-day reliability is worst in West Virginia (464.2 minutes a year excluding major events).
Outage minutes by state, 2013–2025 average
Minutes are customer-weighted SAIDI (System Average Interruption Duration Index): the average total minutes a customer was without power in a year. "Incl. major events" counts everything; "excl. major events" removes major event days such as hurricanes and ice storms.
| Rank | State | Avg minutes/yr incl. major events | ≈ hours | Avg minutes/yr excl. major events | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Maine | 1,063.4 | 17.7 | 236.2 | 1,748.6 | 363.4 |
| 2 | Louisiana | 988.6 | 16.5 | 204.0 | 727.5 | 269.5 |
| 3 | West Virginia | 815.6 | 13.6 | 464.2 | 1,165.5 | 1,013.2 |
| 4 | South Carolina | 627.4 | 10.5 | 114.3 | 3,136.5 | 151.1 |
| 5 | Michigan | 599.8 | 10.0 | 178.6 | 470.4 | 671.5 |
| 6 | Oklahoma | 572.3 | 9.5 | 137.0 | 270.9 | 285.5 |
| 7 | Mississippi | 564.1 | 9.4 | 214.1 | 567.1 | 501.2 |
| 8 | Vermont | 553.6 | 9.2 | 238.4 | 696.7 | 262.9 |
| 9 | North Carolina | 540.1 | 9.0 | 139.5 | 1,441.0 | 191.7 |
| 10 | New Hampshire | 501.4 | 8.4 | 136.7 | 922.7 | 231.3 |
| 11 | Florida | 500.2 | 8.3 | 73.7 | 1,321.5 | 70.5 |
| 12 | Arkansas | 438.2 | 7.3 | 202.8 | 509.1 | 464.8 |
| 13 | Texas | 431.2 | 7.2 | 129.5 | 1,270.6 | 223.5 |
| 14 | Georgia | 416.0 | 6.9 | 131.1 | 1,229.1 | 269.3 |
| 15 | Connecticut | 398.0 | 6.6 | 74.0 | 153.6 | 183.9 |
| 16 | Kentucky | 378.7 | 6.3 | 142.1 | 648.3 | 408.2 |
| 17 | Alabama | 366.2 | 6.1 | 123.3 | 279.4 | 371.6 |
| 18 | Alaska | 362.0 | 6.0 | 208.9 | 327.1 | 540.9 |
| 19 | Oregon | 360.1 | 6.0 | 106.9 | 591.0 | 297.4 |
| 20 | Washington | 348.4 | 5.8 | 126.8 | 623.5 | 372.5 |
| 21 | Virginia | 348.3 | 5.8 | 164.3 | 418.3 | 445.7 |
| 22 | Tennessee | 342.8 | 5.7 | 150.6 | 278.6 | 229.0 |
| 23 | Rhode Island | 336.8 | 5.6 | 62.4 | 104.2 | 182.9 |
| 24 | Indiana | 285.7 | 4.8 | 126.9 | 312.4 | 374.0 |
| 25 | Massachusetts | 277.7 | 4.6 | 93.6 | 102.0 | 121.0 |
| 26 | Ohio | 274.6 | 4.6 | 134.9 | 510.5 | 205.4 |
| 27 | Pennsylvania | 274.2 | 4.6 | 115.6 | 336.1 | 458.1 |
| 28 | Idaho | 267.7 | 4.5 | 174.7 | 232.8 | 306.2 |
| 29 | Iowa | 251.8 | 4.2 | 85.3 | 166.7 | 151.8 |
| 30 | California | 247.8 | 4.1 | 117.2 | 279.6 | 344.6 |
| 31 | Missouri | 242.9 | 4.0 | 100.3 | 224.3 | 457.2 |
| 32 | New Jersey | 242.3 | 4.0 | 87.1 | 174.2 | 154.9 |
| 33 | Kansas | 236.5 | 3.9 | 113.2 | 285.6 | 196.1 |
| 34 | Hawaii | 236.3 | 3.9 | 131.7 | 320.6 | 282.1 |
| 35 | South Dakota | 223.8 | 3.7 | 84.6 | 84.7 | 268.5 |
| 36 | Montana | 218.6 | 3.6 | 137.3 | 351.5 | 288.1 |
| 37 | Nebraska | 216.8 | 3.6 | 66.9 | 641.7 | 547.3 |
| 38 | Wisconsin | 199.4 | 3.3 | 82.7 | 266.1 | 230.0 |
| 39 | Wyoming | 197.8 | 3.3 | 138.8 | 137.8 | 224.2 |
| 40 | New York | 186.8 | 3.1 | 74.6 | 219.9 | 122.0 |
| 41 | Minnesota | 184.6 | 3.1 | 83.0 | 219.6 | 182.4 |
| 42 | Utah | 180.3 | 3.0 | 120.1 | 119.8 | 117.5 |
| 43 | Maryland | 167.0 | 2.8 | 88.9 | 118.1 | 178.3 |
| 44 | Illinois | 163.0 | 2.7 | 71.0 | 156.9 | 144.5 |
| 45 | New Mexico | 162.4 | 2.7 | 121.2 | 278.8 | 172.0 |
| 46 | Colorado | 160.9 | 2.7 | 91.0 | 255.1 | 269.9 |
| 47 | North Dakota | 152.1 | 2.5 | 87.3 | 99.1 | 203.5 |
| 48 | Delaware | 138.4 | 2.3 | 85.2 | 116.1 | 102.5 |
| 49 | Nevada | 113.1 | 1.9 | 71.9 | 158.9 | 127.8 |
| 50 | Arizona | 93.3 | 1.6 | 65.1 | 87.5 | 69.9 |
| 51 | District of Columbia | 75.0 | 1.3 | 61.5 | 32.6 | 50.3 |
National trend
| Year | Minutes incl. major events | Minutes excl. major events | Interruptions per customer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 215.7 | 105.5 | 1.20 |
| 2017 | 473.1 | 114.5 | 1.39 |
| 2020 | 491.9 | 119.2 | 1.44 |
| 2024 | 611.3 | 126.0 | 1.52 |
| 2025 | 262.6 | 120.9 | 1.34 |
DOE-417 disturbance reports
Reported electric emergencies and disturbances rose from 174 (2013) to 383 (2020) and 622 (2024), then 426 in 2025. Part of this rise reflects changes to the DOE-417 form and reporting criteria. The states named in the most events from 2013 to 2025 were Texas (486), California (425), Washington (242), Puerto Rico (223) and Michigan (157). 28.8% of events have no numeric customer count.
How the data was built
For each state and year, utility-level SAIDI and SAIFI values from the EIA-861 reliability file are weighted by each utility's customer count. IEEE 1366 values are used where reported, otherwise the utility's other reporting standard, mirroring EIA's own state totals. Missing source values are treated as missing, never as zero. DOE-417 events are assigned to every state named in the "Area Affected" field; 62 events naming no US state are listed separately rather than guessed. The build script and original federal files (with SHA-256 hashes) are included in the dataset.
Caveats
- Utilities report these figures themselves, and not every utility reports every year.
- For 2023–2025 we checked our totals against EIA's own state totals: the median difference is 0.03 minutes. A few 2025 states differ more, mainly Missouri (our 457.2 vs EIA's 369.1 minutes), because EIA's total uses a smaller customer base. We flag that gap rather than adjust it.
- DOE-417 event counts are not fully comparable across years because the form changed during the period, and some events are security or operations alerts without customer outages.
- A state average does not predict outages at a specific address. Use it as background when deciding how much backup power you need, alongside your own utility's history.
How to use this when planning backup power
Long average outage times and a high share of major-event minutes point to multi-day outages, which favour fuel-supplied standby generators over battery-only systems. Compare these figures with the whole-house generator cost guide, the generator vs home battery comparison and our standby generator specifications reference.
How should you cite this data?
Cite: Backup Generator Guide (2026). US Power Outage Burden by State, 2013–2025 (EIA-861 SAIDI/SAIFI and DOE-417 disturbance events) (Version 1.0.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23548861
Underlying sources: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Form EIA-861; U.S. Department of Energy, OE-417 Electric Emergency and Disturbance Reports. Our editorial policy explains how source scope is handled.