EIA Reveals the Average Length of Customer Power Interruptions
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The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently published data concerning the average length of power interruptions for a typical U.S. electricity customer. On average, customers experienced a total of 5.5 hours of outages in 2022. This reveals both good and bad news – let’s take a deeper dive.
Trends Related to U.S. Power Interruptions
The good news is that the 2022 data shows an improvement from both 2020 and 2021. In 2020, the average customer experienced over 8 hours of outages during the year, and in 2021 the total was approximately 7.3 hours per customer on average. However, the 2022 number is still larger than the average in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2019.
EIA attributes the improvement in 2022 (the most recent annual data available as of the time of this writing) compared to 2020 and 2021 to fewer major events such as extreme weather, vegetation near power lines, and utility practices. For weather events specifically, the U.S. experienced 18 ?billion-dollar storms? in 2022, including the 1-2 punch of Hurricane Ian (Sept. 2022) and Hurricane Nicole (Nov. 2022), both of which pounded Florida. Winter Storm Elliott (Dec. 2022) was also notable as it left over 1.5 million customers across multiple states without power.
In 2022, Alaska, Maine, Tennessee, and West Virginia experienced the most outages, ranging from just under 3 in Vermont to approximately 3.5 in Alaska. States with the fewest outages in 2022 include Delaware, Connecticut, Illinois, and Nebraska.
Maine, West Virginia, Vermont, and Florida experienced the longest outage durations, ranging from about 16 hours in Vermont to a whopping 19.1 hours in Florida. States with the shortest outage durations in 2022 include Delaware, Nebraska, Iowa, and Rhode Island.
As you can see, Delaware and Nebraska had both the fewest number of power interruptions and the shortest durations, so these 2 states win the top prize! Conversely, Maine and West Virginia were both in the top-4 for frequency and duration, so clearly there’s some work that needs to be done in these areas.
