Southern Pine Electric Cooperative

What This Utility Data Tells You

Southern Pine Electric Cooperative is a member-owned electric cooperative operating in Mississippi under EIA identifier 17647. It reports service to approximately 70,323 customer accounts and generated about $0.22 billion in annual electric revenue, with a service footprint spanning 65 ZIP codes. Cooperative ownership means the utility is run for the benefit of the ratepayer-members who elect its board, rather than for shareholder returns, which can shift how rate and investment decisions get made.

In 2023, the average Southern Pine Electric Cooperative customer experienced 1625.1 minutes of power interruptions, a measure known as SAIDI, or System Average Interruption Duration Index. Excluding major weather events from that total, that is substantially above the 120–180 minute national benchmark, indicating either storm-prone geography, aging infrastructure, or extended restoration windows. SAIFI, the average number of outage events per customer, was 5.21 for the same period, so customers statistically faced roughly 5 distinct interruptions that year. Strip out major event days (hurricanes, ice storms) and SAIDI falls to 316.9 minutes; the difference from the headline 1625.1 shows how much of the outage total came from weather rather than everyday grid issues.

Southern Pine Electric Cooperative has 4 years of continuous EIA reporting on file (2020–2023), enough to read a real trend rather than a single-year snapshot. SAIDI climbed from 1203.3 to 1625.1 minutes over that window, a shift that can point to worsening weather exposure or delayed grid modernization.