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. 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 Dakota Electric Association customer experienced 53.2 minutes of power interruptions, a measure known as SAIDI, or System Average Interruption Duration Index. Excluding major weather events from that total, that keeps this utility below the typical 120–180 minute national benchmark, consistent with a well-hardened distribution system and fast restoration crews. 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 climbed from 20.9 to 53.2 minutes over that window, a shift that can point to worsening weather exposure or delayed grid modernization.