Central Alabama Electric Coop

What This Utility Data Tells You

Central Alabama Electric Coop is a member-owned electric cooperative operating in Alabama under EIA identifier 3222. It reports service to approximately 46,733 customer accounts and generated about $0.11 billion in annual electric revenue, with a service footprint spanning 48 ZIP codes. Being member-owned, this cooperative answers to its ratepayers rather than outside shareholders, a structure that tends to influence how rate cases and capital spending get decided.

In 2023, the average Central Alabama Electric Coop customer experienced 568.5 minutes of power interruptions, a metric called SAIDI (System Average Interruption Duration Index). Excluding major weather events from that total, that lands within the usual 120–180 minute national benchmark band, roughly on par with typical U.S. distribution-utility performance. Excluding major event days (hurricanes, ice storms), SAIDI drops to 283.9 minutes, the gap between that figure and the headline 568.5 reveals how much weather, not day-to-day infrastructure, drove outages.

The EIA dataset includes 4 years of continuous reporting (2020–2023) for Central Alabama Electric Coop, which lets you see whether reliability is trending up or down rather than judging from a single snapshot. SAIDI has improved from 4386.8 to 568.5 minutes over that window, a meaningful direction for prospective customers and regulators watching capital investment outcomes. Note: this figure is unusually low compared to typical U.S. utility performance and may reflect an incomplete EIA filing for this year rather than a genuine reliability improvement -- treat with caution and cross-check against Central Alabama Electric Coop's other reported years.