Appalachian Electric Coop

Signature read: long interruption minutes vs the 911 utility cohort (>258 min tercile cut).

What long-outage Appalachian Electric Coop filings show

Appalachian Electric Coop is a member-owned electric cooperative operating in Tennessee under EIA identifier 727. It reports service to approximately 50,621 customer accounts and generated about $0.11 billion in annual electric revenue, with a service footprint spanning 17 ZIP codes. As a cooperative, its governance is accountable to its ratepayer-members rather than shareholders, which often shapes rate-setting and reinvestment priorities.

In 2023, the average Appalachian Electric Coop customer experienced 621.3 minutes of power interruptions, a measure known as SAIDI, or System Average Interruption Duration Index. Excluding major weather events from that total, that falls inside the typical 120–180 minute national benchmark, in line with what most U.S. distribution utilities report. The SAIFI figure, which tracks average outage events per customer, came in at 3.67 for the same period, meaning customers statistically saw about 4 distinct interruptions that year. Once major event days (hurricanes, ice storms) are excluded, SAIDI comes down to 190.4 minutes, and the spread against the headline 621.3 indicates how much weather, versus routine infrastructure, drove the outage total.

Appalachian Electric Coop has 4 years of continuous EIA reporting on file (2020–2023), enough to read a real trend rather than a single-year snapshot. SAIDI climbed from 291.6 to 621.3 minutes over that window, a shift that can point to worsening weather exposure or delayed grid modernization.