Last verified: October 1, 2026. Data: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Electric Power Annual 2024, Table 11.3.
Where you live matters more than anything else when deciding on a backup generator. Averaged over 2023 and 2024, customers in Maine went about 30 hours a year without power and customers in South Carolina about 27, while customers in Arizona and South Dakota lost less than two hours. We converted the EIA’s official reliability figures for every state into hours so you can see where your state stands.
How to read these numbers
- Hours without power is the EIA’s SAIDI figure (average minutes of interruption per customer per year) divided by 60. It includes everything: storms, equipment failures and planned work.
- “Normal days only” excludes “major event days”, the large storms and disasters that utilities report separately. The gap between the two columns shows how much of a state’s outage time comes from big storms, which is exactly when a generator matters most.
- Interruptions per year (SAIFI) counts how often the average customer loses power, regardless of how long.
- These are statewide averages across all reporting utilities. Rural customers at the end of long lines usually do worse than city customers.
Hours without power by state (2023–2024)
Ranked by the two-year average, including major events.
| Rank | State | 2024 hours | 2023 hours | 2-year average | 2024, normal days only | Interruptions per year (2024) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Maine | 29.1 | 31.1 | 30.1 | 4.6 | 3.6 |
| 2 | South Carolina | 52.3 | 2.8 | 27.5 | 2.0 | 2.4 |
| 3 | West Virginia | 19.4 | 12.5 | 16.0 | 8.1 | 2.8 |
| 4 | Texas | 21.2 | 8.3 | 14.7 | 2.2 | 2.1 |
| 5 | North Carolina | 24.0 | 4.2 | 14.1 | 2.4 | 1.8 |
| 6 | Georgia | 20.5 | 5.8 | 13.2 | 3.5 | 2.1 |
| 7 | New Hampshire | 15.4 | 10.8 | 13.1 | 2.2 | 2.0 |
| 8 | Michigan | 7.8 | 18.2 | 13.0 | 2.7 | 1.4 |
| 9 | Kentucky | 10.8 | 14.5 | 12.6 | 2.6 | 2.0 |
| 10 | Florida | 22.0 | 2.7 | 12.3 | 1.1 | 1.8 |
| 11 | Vermont | 11.6 | 12.4 | 12.0 | 4.6 | 2.5 |
| 12 | Arkansas | 8.5 | 15.2 | 11.8 | 3.2 | 2.1 |
| 13 | Mississippi | 9.5 | 13.4 | 11.4 | 4.4 | 2.6 |
| 14 | Louisiana | 12.1 | 9.7 | 10.9 | 3.4 | 2.7 |
| 15 | Oklahoma | 4.5 | 14.9 | 9.7 | 2.0 | 1.7 |
| 16 | Tennessee | 4.6 | 14.3 | 9.5 | 2.7 | 2.0 |
| 17 | Ohio | 8.5 | 6.1 | 7.3 | 2.2 | 1.3 |
| 18 | Hawaii | 5.3 | 8.2 | 6.8 | 3.8 | 2.6 |
| 19 | Washington | 10.4 | 2.5 | 6.5 | 2.6 | 1.8 |
| 20 | Indiana | 5.2 | 7.6 | 6.4 | 2.0 | 1.3 |
| 21 | Oregon | 9.8 | 2.1 | 6.0 | 2.2 | 1.3 |
| 22 | Nebraska | 10.7 | 1.2 | 6.0 | 1.2 | 1.2 |
| 23 | Alaska | 5.5 | 6.2 | 5.8 | 3.2 | 2.6 |
| 24 | Virginia | 7.0 | 3.7 | 5.3 | 2.8 | 1.6 |
| 25 | California | 4.7 | 5.8 | 5.2 | 2.6 | 1.3 |
| 26 | Missouri | 3.7 | 6.2 | 5.0 | 1.8 | 1.2 |
| 27 | Pennsylvania | 5.6 | 4.2 | 4.9 | 2.2 | 1.4 |
| 28 | Alabama | 4.7 | 4.9 | 4.8 | 2.0 | 1.9 |
| 29 | Kansas | 4.8 | 4.7 | 4.7 | 1.7 | 1.5 |
| 30 | Montana | 5.9 | 2.0 | 3.9 | 2.6 | 1.6 |
| 31 | Wisconsin | 4.4 | 3.0 | 3.7 | 1.5 | 1.0 |
| 32 | New Mexico | 4.6 | 2.8 | 3.7 | 2.6 | 1.3 |
| 33 | Idaho | 3.9 | 2.3 | 3.1 | 2.9 | 1.3 |
| 34 | Illinois | 2.6 | 3.5 | 3.0 | 1.0 | 0.9 |
| 35 | Massachusetts | 1.7 | 4.3 | 3.0 | 1.3 | 0.8 |
| 36 | Colorado | 4.3 | 1.7 | 3.0 | 2.0 | 1.4 |
| 37 | Minnesota | 3.7 | 2.1 | 2.9 | 1.5 | 1.3 |
| 38 | New York | 3.7 | 2.0 | 2.8 | 1.2 | 0.9 |
| 39 | Connecticut | 2.6 | 2.7 | 2.7 | 1.2 | 0.9 |
| 40 | North Dakota | 1.7 | 3.5 | 2.6 | 1.4 | 0.9 |
| 41 | Nevada | 2.6 | 2.3 | 2.5 | 1.1 | 1.1 |
| 42 | Maryland | 2.0 | 2.8 | 2.4 | 1.3 | 0.8 |
| 43 | New Jersey | 2.9 | 1.8 | 2.4 | 1.7 | 1.1 |
| 44 | Iowa | 2.8 | 1.7 | 2.3 | 1.5 | 1.1 |
| 45 | Wyoming | 2.3 | 2.1 | 2.2 | 1.8 | 1.0 |
| 46 | Utah | 2.0 | 2.1 | 2.1 | 1.8 | 1.0 |
| 47 | Delaware | 1.9 | 1.8 | 1.9 | 1.1 | 0.8 |
| 48 | Rhode Island | 1.7 | 1.7 | 1.7 | 1.0 | 0.9 |
| 49 | Arizona | 1.5 | 1.8 | 1.6 | 1.2 | 1.0 |
| 50 | South Dakota | 1.4 | 1.3 | 1.3 | 1.0 | 0.8 |
| 51 | District of Columbia | 0.5 | 1.2 | 0.9 | 0.4 | 0.3 |
Source: EIA Electric Power Annual, Table 11.3 (reliability metrics by state, 2024 and 2023). Hours calculated by BackupPowerPlain from SAIDI minutes. U.S. total in 2024: about 10.2 hours including major events and 2.1 hours on normal days only, compared with 5.7 hours in 2023.
What stands out
Big storms drive most of the lost hours
Across the country, normal days account for only about two hours a year. Everything above that comes from major events. In 2024, South Carolina’s figure jumped from under 3 hours to more than 52 hours, almost entirely because of Hurricane Helene, while its normal-day figure stayed at about 2 hours. Florida, Georgia and North Carolina show the same pattern. The EIA’s own analysis attributes about 80% of the hours lost in 2024 to major events such as Hurricanes Beryl, Helene and Milton (EIA).
Some states are consistently bad, not just unlucky
Maine, Vermont, West Virginia, New Hampshire and Kentucky had long outages in both years. These are heavily forested, rural states where storms bring trees down on long distribution lines. West Virginia also has the highest normal-day figure in the country, about 8 hours, so outages there are not only a storm problem.
One bad year can mislead you
Michigan, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Arkansas had much worse outages in 2023 than in 2024; Texas, Nebraska and Washington the other way round. Look at several years, and at your own experience, before deciding.
How long is a typical outage in each state?
The hours in the table tell you how much time you lose in a year, but not how long each outage lasts. That second number matters more for a generator decision: a fridge stays cold for about four hours with the door shut, so ten 1-hour outages are an inconvenience, while one 10-hour outage means spoiled food, a cold or hot house and, for homes on a well, no water.
Dividing the 2024 hours by the number of interruptions gives a rough average length per outage. It is only an approximation, because one very long storm outage pulls the average up, but the contrast between states is striking:
| State (2024) | Hours without power | Interruptions | Rough hours per outage | Share of hours from major events |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| South Carolina | 52.3 | 2.4 | About 22 | About 96% |
| North Carolina | 24.0 | 1.8 | About 13 | About 90% |
| Florida | 22.0 | 1.8 | About 12 | About 95% |
| Texas | 21.2 | 2.1 | About 10 | About 90% |
| Maine | 29.1 | 3.6 | About 8 | About 84% |
| West Virginia | 19.4 | 2.8 | About 7 | About 58% |
| California | 4.7 | 1.3 | About 3.6 | About 45% |
| Illinois | 2.6 | 0.9 | About 2.9 | About 62% |
| Arizona | 1.5 | 1.0 | About 1.5 | About 20% |
Calculated by BackupPowerPlain from the EIA figures in the main table. “Share from major events” compares the all-days and normal-days columns.
Two different risk profiles appear. In the hurricane states, outages are rare but very long when they happen, and almost all of the lost time comes from a handful of storms. That is the case a standby generator, or a portable generator with enough fuel for several days, is built for. In West Virginia and northern New England, outages are more frequent and a bigger share happens on ordinary days, which favors equipment that starts on its own and handles many short outages without anyone having to drag a portable out of the garage.
Regional patterns
- Northern New England. Maine (30.1 hours, two-year average), New Hampshire (13.1) and Vermont (12.0) sit near the top every year. Southern New England is very different: Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island all averaged under 3 hours.
- The Southeast coast. South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida all averaged between 12 and 28 hours, driven by hurricanes. Their normal-day figures are among the lowest in the country, which shows how storm-dependent the risk is.
- The South-Central states. Texas, Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Tennessee all averaged roughly 9.5 to 15 hours, with ice storms, tornado outbreaks and Gulf hurricanes all contributing.
- The Midwest. Mostly in the 2–7 hour range, with Michigan (13.0) the clear exception after a bad 2023.
- The Mountain West and Southwest. Utah, Wyoming, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado and Idaho all averaged about 3 hours or less, among the most reliable service in the country.
- The Pacific Northwest. Washington and Oregon each averaged about 6–6.5 hours, but both jumped in 2024, a reminder that winter windstorms can produce long outages even in normally reliable areas.
What this means for your generator decision
| Your situation | What usually makes sense |
|---|---|
| Top 15 states, or rural area with long feeder lines | A standby generator is worth getting quotes for, especially with a well, sump pump or medical needs. See Is a whole house generator worth it? |
| Middle of the table | A portable generator with an interlock kit, or a smaller standby unit for essentials. Compare in Standby vs Portable. |
| Bottom 15 states, city location | Outages are usually short; a battery or a small portable for the fridge and internet is often enough. See Generator vs Battery Backup. |
Statewide averages can hide local reality. Your utility’s own reliability report, and your neighbors’ experience, are worth checking too. Many state utility commissions publish utility-by-utility figures.
How to check your own outage history
A state average is a starting point. Before you spend thousands of dollars, put together your own picture with these steps:
- Count your own outages. Go back over the last three to five years and list every outage longer than about four hours, and how long each one lasted. Your memory, old texts from your utility or insurance claims for spoiled food all help.
- Check your utility’s outage map and alerts. Most utilities have an outage map and text alerts. Signing up gives you a record of future outages and restoration times.
- Look for your utility’s reliability report. Many state utility commissions require utilities to publish yearly reliability figures, sometimes broken down by circuit or region. Search for your utility’s name plus “reliability report” or “SAIDI”.
- Ask your neighbors. People on the same street share the same line. If the house next door has a standby generator, ask how often it has run.
- Consider your position on the line. Homes at the end of a long rural feeder, surrounded by trees, are usually restored later than homes near a substation or on the same circuit as a hospital.
If your own history shows at least one outage longer than a day in the last few years, the cost analysis in Is a whole house generator worth it? is worth working through with your own numbers.
Frequently asked questions
What do SAIDI and SAIFI mean?
They are the standard reliability measures utilities report. SAIDI is the average total minutes of interruption per customer in a year; SAIFI is the average number of interruptions per customer. Dividing SAIDI by SAIFI gives the average length of an interruption.
Why does my state look reliable when my power goes out often?
The figures are averages across every customer of every reporting utility in the state. Dense cities with underground lines pull the average down, so a rural home at the end of a wooded line can see far more outage time than its state figure suggests.
Does a reliable state mean I don’t need backup power?
Not necessarily. Reliability averages say nothing about your specific needs. A home with a sump pump in a wet basement, a well, or someone who depends on powered medical equipment may need backup power even in a state with short average outages. In those cases, the size of the risk matters more than how often it happens.