United Illuminating Co

What This Utility Data Tells You

United Illuminating Co is an investor-owned utility operating in Connecticut under EIA identifier 19497. It reports service to approximately 281,971 customer accounts and generated about $0.67 billion in annual electric revenue, with a service footprint spanning 78 ZIP codes. Because it is investor-owned, the state public utility commission oversees its rate cases and reliability performance rather than a local board.

In 2023, the average United Illuminating Co customer experienced 56.0 minutes of power interruptions, the industry-standard SAIDI metric (System Average Interruption Duration Index). 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 0.75 for the same period, so customers statistically faced roughly 1 distinct interruption that year. Strip out major event days (hurricanes, ice storms) and SAIDI falls to 43.0 minutes; the difference from the headline 56.0 shows how much of the outage total came from weather rather than everyday grid issues.

The EIA dataset includes 4 years of continuous reporting (2020–2023) for United Illuminating Co, which lets you see whether reliability is trending up or down rather than judging from a single snapshot. SAIDI dropped from 1293.0 to 56.0 minutes across that span, a direction regulators and prospective customers tend to watch closely. 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 United Illuminating Co's other reported years.