Almost like something weird is going on.
U.S. electricity customers experienced an average of 11 hours of power outages in 2024, nearly twice as many as the annual average across the previous decade, according to a new report from the Energy Information Administration.
Hurricanes accounted for 80% of those lost hours, with most of last year’s outages resulting from major weather events like hurricanes Beryl, Helene and Milton, EIA said in the report released Monday.
“Interruptions attributed to major events averaged nearly nine hours in 2024, compared with an average of nearly four hours per year in 2014 through 2023,” EIA said. “Service interruptions that aren’t triggered by major events routinely average about two hours per year.”
Customers in South Carolina were significant outliers in terms of outage duration, the report said, experiencing an average of 53 hours of outages in 2024. Much of this was due to last September’s Hurricane Helene, which left 1.2 million customers in South Carolina without electricity.
The report appears to build on a growing body of evidence that extreme weather is taking a heavier toll on the electric power system in parts of the country. In October, JD Power released a report that found the average length of the longest outages are getting longer and concluded that disasters have become a “fact of life” for many utility customers.
Helene, in particular, caused severe damage to utility systems in the U.S. Southeast and Mid-Atlantic.
Duke Energy said after the hurricane that transmission infrastructure in upstate South Carolina “was severely damaged and, in many cases, destroyed” and would need to be entirely rebuilt.
Overall, 45% of utility customers nationwide say they have experienced a power outage in the first half of 2025. Of those outages, 48% were due to extreme weather such as a hurricane, ice or snowstorm, thunderstorm, wind or tornado or fire. These extreme weather events were so violent that 17% of customers who were affected by a natural disaster say they had to evacuate their homes.
Based on a survey, 45% of utility customers nationwide experienced a power outage in the first half of 2025, according to JD Power’s U.S. Electric Utility Residential Customer Satisfaction Study, which the company has been doing for over 20 years.
Of those outages, nearly half were due to extreme weather such as a hurricane, snowstorm, tornado or fire, and 17% of customers who were affected by a natural disaster said it was so severe they had to evacuate their homes.
Extreme weather isn’t the only problem, however. Spalinger said the subset of customers who experience outages are also reporting more frequent, shorter blackouts.
Part of that could be the rise of remote and digital work that makes people more sensitive to short outages they may not have noticed when they were working from an office, Spalinger said. But the impact of extreme events that cause longer outages is changing customer behavior, he added.
“Customers are now having to prepare and look for different solutions, whether it’s solar or generators,” he said. “It’s almost two-thirds of the customer base that’s really interested in some backup solution.”
A recent decision by President Donald Trump to deny disaster aid to two electric utilities in rural northern Michigan could cost residents tens of millions of dollars.
The Oct. 22 denial is a striking example of how Trump’s cuts to disaster aid — and his vow for deeper reductions next year — threaten to shift billions of dollars in costs from federal taxpayers to households struggling to rebuild. In this case, it would hit a working-class region that voted overwhelmingly for the president last year, helping him win the crucial swing state.
Those households could now face thousands of dollars apiece in rate hikes to make up for the costs of rebuilding their communities’ electric grids after a three-day ice storm in March, utility officials and lawmakers warned.
The denial came after the Trump administration documented $90 million in damage to utility infrastructure, according to records obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News. The amount is nearly five times the federal threshold to qualify for disaster aid. But in its October denial letter, the Federal Emergency Management Agency told Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer that assistance to the utilities “is not warranted.”
“It could be tens of millions of dollars left on the backs of the members,” said Allan Berg, the CEO of Presque Isle Electric & Gas, known as PIE&G, in northeastern Michigan.
The other utility, Great Lakes Energy in northwestern Michigan, said on its website that “all storm-related costs not reimbursed by state or federal disaster aid will be paid for by the cooperative’s entire membership.”
Both utilities are nonprofit electric cooperatives, which serve rural areas and are owned by customers — unlike the for-profit, investor-owned utilities that electrify most of the United States. They collectively serve 160,000 households and businesses in this heavily wooded region.
The funding denial “could make the co-op actually go broke if something isn’t done to make them whole again,” said Pete Rose, a retired PIE&G foreman, of his former employer.
Whitmer warned Trump in August that ratepayers face surcharges and rate hikes “equivalent to at least $4,500 per household” without federal aid. Her office did not respond to a question on whether she supports a state legislative proposal that would have Michigan aid businesses such as the power companies directly.