Nationwide Coverage, Transparent Methodology

How the outage data is collected

Coverage starts with the utilities themselves. We collect outage data directly from more than 1,200 electric utilities and cooperatives across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, the same providers that report how many of their customers are out, and normalize each provider's figures into one consistent national feed. The feed refreshes about every 10 minutes, and every record is stamped with a last-updated time (UTC), so you always know how current it is. Rather than a single national estimate, the data resolves to state, county, and utility level, which is why the same source can tell you how many customers are out nationwide and which utility is behind a particular county's outage. Optional county boundary geometry (GeoJSON) is available for mapping, and webhooks push the data on each refresh cycle. The result is a picture of US power outages that stays up to date, rather than a one-time snapshot.

What's covered

• State, county, and utility-level current outage counts and customers served
• Outage % and last-updated timestamps on every record
• Optional county boundary geometry (GeoJSON) for instant mapping
• Webhook delivery on each refresh cycle
• Historical outage data available on request

What our coverage figure means

Coverage is stated plainly so you can trust it. The coverage percentage is the share of monitored US electricity customers, meaning the customers served by the utilities we track, not the entire US population or every utility in the country. It is the electricity customers served by all monitored utilities, divided by the total US electricity customers, times 100. The denominator comes from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA): total US electricity customers (accounts, all sectors), from Form EIA-861 and the Electric Power Annual. Because it's measured against a public baseline, the same percentage can be cited in a government briefing, a newsroom graphic, or a corporate risk review, and everyone knows exactly what it counts.

How we calculate 96.04%

Accuracy and honest limitations

Being transparent also means being clear about the edges. The figures are as-reported by utilities, so they reflect what each provider publishes and can carry that provider's own reporting lag or rounding, and a utility that doesn't publish outage data isn't counted. Coverage describes monitored customers, not every meter in the country. The views on the page are current severity, not forecasts or trends, and historical outage data is available on request rather than shown as a time series here. None of this is buried in fine print: the coverage figure is live, the denominator is a cited public source, and every value is timestamped, so you can always judge how current and how complete the picture is.