EIA Form 861 · 2023 · highest SAIDI first

States with the worst electric outages

Customer-weighted state averages sorted by interruption duration. Higher SAIDI means more outage minutes per customer per year, often storm exposure plus rural geography, not a single ownership verdict.

Full table ↓ Most reliable

Answer first

Maine posts the highest customer-weighted state SAIDI at 1863.0 minutes in the 2023 EIA filing; the fifth-highest sits at 866.4 minutes versus a national utility average near 341 minutes.

2023
Filing year
51
States with SAIDI
918
Utilities with filings
341 min
National utility SAIDI

Corpus vintage 2026-08-30. Open any state row for the within-state utility spread, averages hide municipal vs cooperative gaps.

SAIDI, average outage minutes per customer per year (higher = worse on this page)

Highest-SAIDI states (2023)

Customer-weighted state averages. Higher minutes per customer per year is worse on this list.

  1. 1
    Maine 1,863 min
    3 utilities reporting
  2. 2
    Oklahoma 1,280 min
    23 utilities reporting
  3. 3
    Michigan 1,115 min
    23 utilities reporting
  4. 4
    Kentucky 868 min
    33 utilities reporting
  5. 5
    Tennessee 866 min
    49 utilities reporting
  6. 6
    Mississippi 801 min
    20 utilities reporting
  7. 7
    Arkansas 772 min
    18 utilities reporting
  8. 8
    West Virginia 747 min
    2 utilities reporting

Source EIA Form 861 · 2023

0%100%37%
19 of 51 reporting states sit above the 341-minute national utility SAIDI. State averages and the national figure use different denominators.

The bar to make the worst 8: 747.2 min SAIDI

Where the worst-8 cutoff sits among all 51 reporting states by average SAIDI

747 Higher than most lower SAIDI than 14% of 51 states

Reporting states, banded by average SAIDI (min/yr)

Each bar is a band; taller bars hold more states. The dashed line + filled bar mark this entry. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share, and where it sits relative to this entry.

Source EIA Form 861 · 2023

Three structural drivers of high SAIDI

High-SAIDI states usually combine storm exposure, long rural feeders, and aging overhead plant , often well above the ~362-minute unweighted mean across reporting states in this table. A single active storm year can move rankings several places, multi-year reads beat one EIA release. Cross-check most-reliable states and the SAIDI/SAIFI explainer.

How to read this list

The actionable number for a move is the utility serving the future ZIP, not the state average. Click a state to see every reporting utility, then use the homepage lookup.

# State Avg SAIDI (min/yr)
1 Maine 1863.0
2 Oklahoma 1279.8
3 Michigan 1115.3
4 Kentucky 867.6
5 Tennessee 866.4
6 Mississippi 801.3
7 Arkansas 772.3
8 West Virginia 747.2
9 Vermont 744.4
10 New Hampshire 644.5
11 Texas 556.6
12 Hawaii 491.2
13 Indiana 455.5
14 Alaska 375.3
15 Missouri 374.2
16 Ohio 366.2
17 North Dakota 364.7
18 California 346.5
19 Georgia 345.9
20 Alabama 296.1
21 Kansas 283.3
22 Virginia 279.3
23 Massachusetts 259.3
24 Pennsylvania 255.3
25 Louisiana 240.8
26 North Carolina 217.3
27 Illinois 205.9
28 Maryland 191.0
29 Wisconsin 184.2
30 Connecticut 168.7
31 New Mexico 167.3
32 Florida 160.1
33 Washington 158.2
34 Wyoming 156.2
35 Nevada 138.7
36 Idaho 138.5
37 South Carolina 135.5
38 Minnesota 126.7
39 New York 122.0
40 Oregon 121.5
41 Utah 118.7
42 Montana 118.7
43 New Jersey 108.3
44 Delaware 108.2
45 Arizona 106.9
46 Iowa 105.2
47 Rhode Island 104.6
48 Colorado 99.4
49 South Dakota 83.4
50 Nebraska 72.6
51 District of Columbia 71.9

Why do some states have more outages? Rural territories, severe weather, older overhead plant, and cooperative-heavy mixes tend toward longer restoration. Figures here exclude major event days at the utility level where reported.

Download the EIA Form 861 reliability extract cited on this page: eia-form-861-reliability-statistics.csv (CC BY 4.0).

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) Form 861, Annual Electric Power Industry Report. Data reflects most recent available reporting year. Figures are state-level averages weighted across reporting utilities

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), electric utilities publish SAIDI and SAIFI reliability metrics in Form 861 annual filings. Every figure on PlainUtility is rebuilt from those federal tables; no number is typed in by an editor. This page draws directly on EIA Form 861 reliability data, no figure is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.