How long the power was out in 2025, state by state

Every year, utilities report to the Energy Information Administration how long their average customer went without power. For 2025, across the utilities that measure it the standard way:

• The average customer was without power for 270 minutes, about four and a half hours, over 1.35 interruptions.
• More than half of that came on major event days: the worst days of the year, mostly severe storms, which utilities count separately. Without them, the figure was 127 minutes.

By state

Customers in West Virginia went longest without power, 1,013 minutes on average, followed by Virginia at 876. Those in the District of Columbia went 50 minutes, and in Florida and Arizona just over 70.

Major storms explain much of the spread. Without them, West Virginia's figure falls by half, to 498 minutes, and Nebraska's from 543 to 86.

Sorted by minutes without power, all days counted:

State	All days	Without major events
West Virginia	1,013	498
Virginia	876	284
Michigan	609	161
Alaska	564	243
Nebraska	543	86
Mississippi	524	319
Arkansas	474	215
Pennsylvania	413	136
Kentucky	396	171
Washington	393	147
Missouri	379	114
Maine	363	192
California	359	140
Indiana	349	123
Hawaii	335	202
Idaho	306	143
Oklahoma	298	127
Montana	286	135
South Dakota	284	64
Colorado	276	118
Alabama	270	127
Georgia	269	146
Louisiana	268	226
Wisconsin	264	87
Wyoming	262	137
Oregon	259	98
Vermont	251	151
New York	239	138
Tennessee	229	147
Texas	222	158
Connecticut	214	86
North Dakota	212	75
Ohio	206	130
North Carolina	196	145
Kansas	193	96
Maryland	184	80
Iowa	183	80
Rhode Island	183	60
Minnesota	182	93
New Mexico	162	143
New Jersey	155	96
South Carolina	153	103
New Hampshire	151	86
Illinois	145	62
Nevada	128	101
Massachusetts	123	76
Utah	113	80
Delaware	104	71
Arizona	73	64
Florida	72	65
District of Columbia	50	34

By utility

Among the 167 utilities with at least 100,000 customers in a state, counting each state separately, the median customer was without power for 195 minutes, and 101 without major events.

The longest, all days counted:

Utility	State	Minutes	Without major events
Great Lakes Energy Cooperative	MI	4,401	315
City Utilities of Springfield	MO	1,288	80
Monongahela Power	WV	1,250	553
Appalachian Power	VA	1,116	328
Appalachian Power	WV	1,034	546
Avista	ID	973	208
Southern Indiana Gas & Electric (CenterPoint Energy)	IN	949	83
Indiana Michigan Power	MI	932	142
Kentucky Power	KY	911	376
Consumers Energy	MI	819	163

Great Lakes Energy's figure, more than three days, is mostly one storm: the ice storm that struck northern Michigan at the end of March.

The shortest:

Utility	State	Minutes
Dakota Electric Association	MN	29
City of Anaheim	CA	32
Modesto Irrigation District	CA	36
Gainesville Regional Utilities	FL	37
Colorado Springs Utilities	CO	41
Brunswick Electric Membership Corp.	NC	41
Tucson Electric Power	AZ	42
Santee Cooper	SC	43
Florida Power & Light	FL	47

Paying more does not buy fewer outages

Set against what each utility charged households per kWh in 2025, outage minutes show no clear pattern. The cheapest quarter of these utilities, at a median 12.5¢ per kWh, had a median 89 minutes without power on ordinary days. The most expensive quarter, at 20.9¢, had 84. The two quarters in between had more than either.

Ownership shows more of a difference. City utilities, which mostly serve compact urban areas, had a median 76 minutes on ordinary days, against 107 for investor-owned utilities and 101 for co-ops.

What this does not tell you

• It is an average. Some customers went days without power while their neighbors kept it throughout.
• Brief flickers are not counted. The standard counts interruptions of more than five minutes.
• One year is one year. A single storm can make a utility's year, as it did Great Lakes Energy's, and the order changes from one year to the next.

How we measured this

• Source: EIA-861 final data for 2025, for utilities reporting by the IEEE 1366 standard: average minutes of interruption per customer per year (SAIDI), with and without major event days. State figures are EIA's state totals.
• Utilities: those with at least 100,000 customers in a state, each state counted separately. Nashville Electric Service is left out, because it reports fewer minutes with major events than without; EIA's Tennessee total includes it.
• Price: EIA's 2025 bundled residential price for each utility, as in the cheapest and most expensive electric utilities, compared across the 162 of these utilities that have one.

What to do with this

Reliability is not on your tariff, but a home battery can carry essentials through an outage. On some tariffs it can also trim a peak or a demand charge, as some utilities charge households for their peak demand explains.