Is the U.S. Power Grid Getting Less Reliable? 2015–2025 Trends
Data: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Form EIA-861 & Electric Power Annual. 51 jurisdictions ranked. Methodology on our data page.
From 2015 to 2025, everyday U.S. grid reliability stayed in a narrow band: excluding major events, the average customer lost between 1 hr 56 min and 2 hr 12 min of power per year. Total outage time swings widely with major storms, peaking at 11 hr 3 min in 2024. On average, major events accounted for about 64% of all outage minutes each year (EIA).
U.S. SAIDI by year
| Year | All events | Excluding major events |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 3 hr 29 min | 1 hr 57 min |
| 2016 | 4 hr 28 min | 1 hr 60 min |
| 2017 | 8 hr 26 min | 1 hr 57 min |
| 2018 | 5 hr 49 min | 2 hr 1 min |
| 2019 | 4 hr 56 min | 2 hr 2 min |
| 2020 | 7 hr 36 min | 1 hr 56 min |
| 2021 | 7 hr 56 min | 2 hr 6 min |
| 2022 | 5 hr 33 min | 2 hr 11 min |
| 2023 | 6 hr 7 min | 2 hr 4 min |
| 2024 | 11 hr 3 min | 2 hr 12 min |
| 2025 | 4 hr 29 min | 2 hr 5 min |
Source: EIA Electric Power Annual Table 11.4, U.S. total (IEEE method).
What the trend means
The grid's day-to-day performance, which covers equipment failures, animals, vehicle strikes and routine weather, has held roughly steady for a decade. What changes year to year is major events: hurricanes, derechos, ice storms, wildfires and wildfire-prevention shutoffs. Those events now drive most outage minutes, which is why planning for multi-day outages matters more than everyday reliability.
Looking ahead, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) warns in its reliability assessments that fast demand growth from data centers and electrification, plus the retirement of dispatchable generation, raises the risk of supply shortfalls during extreme heat and cold. Read more in AI data centers and the power grid.
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You may reuse our derived data under CC BY 4.0 with attribution. Underlying government data is public domain.
PowerOutageTracker.com. "Is the U.S. Power Grid Getting Less Reliable? 2015–2025 Trends." Accessed EIA 2025 data. https://poweroutagetracker.com/reports/us-power-grid-reliability-trends