Volunteer Electric Coop

What This Utility Data Tells You

Volunteer Electric Coop is a member-owned electric cooperative operating in Tennessee under EIA identifier 19898. It reports service to approximately 126,279 customer accounts and generated about $0.27 billion in annual electric revenue, with a service footprint spanning 70 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 Volunteer Electric Coop customer experienced 1056.7 minutes of power interruptions — a metric called SAIDI (System Average Interruption Duration Index). 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 6.37 for the same period, so customers statistically faced roughly 6 distinct interruptions that year. Excluding major event days (hurricanes, ice storms), SAIDI drops to 429.5 minutes — the gap between that figure and the headline 1056.7 reveals how much weather, not day-to-day infrastructure, drove outages.

The EIA dataset includes 4 years of continuous reporting (2020–2023) for Volunteer Electric Coop, which lets you see whether reliability is trending up or down rather than judging from a single snapshot. SAIDI has increased from 271.5 to 1056.7 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.