Board of Water Electric & Communications

What This Utility Data Tells You

Board of Water Electric & Communications is a municipally-owned utility operating in Iowa under EIA identifier 13143. It reports service to approximately 11,695 customer accounts and generated about $0.07 billion in annual electric revenue, with a service footprint spanning 2 ZIP codes. As a municipal utility, it is typically governed by a local board or city council and is exempt from federal income tax.

In 2023, the average Board of Water Electric & Communications customer experienced 42.6 minutes of power interruptions — a metric called SAIDI (System Average Interruption Duration Index). That places this utility well below the 120–180 minute national benchmark, signaling strong grid hardening and fast restoration practices. SAIFI — the average number of outage events per customer — was 0.65 for the same period, so customers statistically faced roughly 1 distinct interruption that year. Excluding major event days (hurricanes, ice storms), SAIDI drops to 13.7 minutes — the gap between that figure and the headline 42.6 reveals how much weather, not day-to-day infrastructure, drove outages.

The EIA dataset includes 4 years of continuous reporting (2020–2023) for Board of Water Electric & Communications, which lets you see whether reliability is trending up or down rather than judging from a single snapshot. SAIDI has increased from 36.4 to 42.6 minutes, which may reflect either worsening weather exposure or delayed grid modernization. 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.