BENCO Electric Cooperative

What This Utility Data Tells You

BENCO Electric Cooperative is a member-owned electric cooperative operating in Minnesota under EIA identifier 1884. It reports service to approximately 19,764 customer accounts and generated about $0.05 billion in annual electric revenue, with a service footprint spanning 38 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 BENCO Electric Cooperative customer experienced 128.3 minutes of power interruptions — a metric called SAIDI (System Average Interruption Duration Index). That sits within the 120–180 minute national benchmark range, indicating performance typical of U.S. distribution utilities. SAIFI — the average number of outage events per customer — was 1.00 for the same period, so customers statistically faced roughly 1 distinct interruption that year. Excluding major event days (hurricanes, ice storms), SAIDI drops to 80.2 minutes — the gap between that figure and the headline 128.3 reveals how much weather, not day-to-day infrastructure, drove outages.

The EIA dataset includes 4 years of continuous reporting (2020–2023) for BENCO Electric Cooperative, which lets you see whether reliability is trending up or down rather than judging from a single snapshot. SAIDI has improved from 142.7 to 128.3 minutes over that window — a meaningful direction for prospective customers and regulators watching capital investment outcomes. All figures on this page come directly from EIA Form 861, the federal annual electric power industry survey, with service territory ZIPs sourced from OpenEI — you can cross-reference them with your own utility bill or use them when comparing providers before relocating.