Dakota Electric Association

What This Utility Data Tells You

Dakota Electric Association is a member-owned electric cooperative operating in Minnesota under EIA identifier 25177. It reports service to approximately 115,355 customer accounts and generated about $0.22 billion in annual electric revenue, with a service footprint spanning 15 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 Dakota Electric Association customer experienced 53.2 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 0.49 for the same period, so customers statistically faced roughly 0 distinct interruptions that year. Excluding major event days (hurricanes, ice storms), SAIDI drops to 19.2 minutes — the gap between that figure and the headline 53.2 reveals how much weather, not day-to-day infrastructure, drove outages.

The EIA dataset includes 4 years of continuous reporting (2020–2023) for Dakota Electric Association, which lets you see whether reliability is trending up or down rather than judging from a single snapshot. SAIDI has increased from 20.9 to 53.2 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.