Austin Energy

What This Utility Data Tells You

Austin Energy is a municipally-owned utility operating in Texas under EIA identifier 1015. It reports service to approximately 544,400 customer accounts and generated about $1.52 billion in annual electric revenue, with a service footprint spanning 82 ZIP codes. Being municipally owned, the utility answers to a local board or city council rather than a state commission, and carries a federal income tax exemption.

In 2023, the average Austin Energy customer experienced 3265.4 minutes of power interruptions, the industry-standard SAIDI metric (System Average Interruption Duration Index). Excluding major weather events from that total, that keeps this utility below the typical 120–180 minute national benchmark, consistent with a well-hardened distribution system and fast restoration crews. SAIFI, the average number of outage events per customer, was 1.49 for the same period, so customers statistically faced roughly 1 distinct interruption that year. Strip out major event days (hurricanes, ice storms) and SAIDI falls to 83.8 minutes; the difference from the headline 3265.4 shows how much of the outage total came from weather rather than everyday grid issues.

The EIA dataset includes 4 years of continuous reporting (2020–2023) for Austin Energy, which lets you see whether reliability is trending up or down rather than judging from a single snapshot. SAIDI has increased from 54.3 to 3265.4 minutes, which may reflect either worsening weather exposure or delayed grid modernization.