City of Ames - (IA)

What This Utility Data Tells You

City of Ames - (IA) is a municipally-owned utility operating in Iowa under EIA identifier 554. It reports service to approximately 27,940 customer accounts and generated about $0.06 billion in annual electric revenue, with a service footprint spanning 6 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 City of Ames - (IA) customer experienced 33.2 minutes of power interruptions, a metric called SAIDI (System Average Interruption Duration Index). Excluding major weather events from that total, that places this utility well below the 120–180 minute national benchmark, signaling strong grid hardening and fast restoration practices. The SAIFI figure, which tracks average outage events per customer, came in at 0.40 for the same period, meaning customers statistically saw about 0 distinct interruptions that year. Strip out major event days (hurricanes, ice storms) and SAIDI falls to 15.1 minutes; the difference from the headline 33.2 shows how much of the outage total came from weather rather than everyday grid issues.

With 4 consecutive years of EIA data (2020–2023), City of Ames - (IA)'s reliability record can be judged on trend rather than one isolated year. Over that window, SAIDI moved from 2136.9 down to 33.2 minutes, a trend worth noting for anyone weighing 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 City of Ames - (IA)'s other reported years.