About PowerOutage.us
PowerOutage.us collects, records, and aggregates live power outage data from utilities all over the United States, with the goal to create the single most reliable and complete source of power outage information available.
Utility Information
We are open to work with any electric utility to add their outage data to the PowerOutage.us system. Learn about our partnership process and integration options.
Major Events
This system has tracked major outage events, including hurricanes, grid failures, and severe weather. Explore documented historical events with detailed statistics.
Platform Statistics
Contact Information
Social Media
Most states have multiple electric utilities, many small, some big. With these large numbers of companies, it can be hard to get a true overall status of the power grid in a particular area. This project collects information from over 800 Utilities into one place, with more being added all the time: Making this site the most complete source of power outage information currently available.
Most utilities put few resources behind their publicly facing OMSs (Outage Management Systems). They are focused on getting their customers reconnected, as they should be. However, this means that during big outage events where many people want to know the status of the power in a particular area, the utility's OMS can be overwhelmed if not completely unresponsive. Meanwhile PowerOutage.us stands up to heavy web traffic without faltering, allowing people directly affected by an outage event and onlookers to stay informed and up to date.
In addition, no utility releases detailed historical power outage information, so we store all the information we collect; Making this project the only source of detailed historical power outage information. While this historical data is not available directly on the site, you can contact us for more information.
I created this system out of a fascination with watching power outage maps during big storms as a kid and unique datasets as an adult. I like working on interesting projects and for a while had wanted to build something big that others could use and find interest in.
Since I started this in 2016, it has grown way beyond what I could have ever hoped for, now as my full-time job, and even employing others. It continues to bring me great satisfaction in building something used by millions of people.
Outage data will only be as accurate as the Utility reports it. We detect and adapt when a utility site breaks and/or reports inaccurate data but in some cases it is essentially impossible to discern the difference. During major events, we will be actively monitoring the status of many parts of PowerOutage.us including the data imports and will address any unhandled issues ASAP.
Many small companies do not report outage information online, and in these cases there is nothing we can do to collect this information. If your utility is one of these then you can help! Call them up, email them, or reach out to them on social media and let them know you want them to add a public outage reporting system.
If you have any questions, or see any issues on the site, please reach out to us!
927 Utilities tracked, 213 Million Customers Tracked!
Website:
- Improve user experience on utility pages for untracked utilities
- Fixed bug where some situations utilities could be accessed in the wrong region
Api:
- Json v1.6 Changed Behavior: If a utility is not tracked return 0 customers tracked instead of the customers served in the CustomersTracked field
- Don't return disabled states in the API. (State records that we have created but are not tracking and not displaying on the website yet.)
Map Widget:
- Published Map Widget Version 1.6!
- Added some more customizability and cleaned up alot of stuff to make adding new countries to the Widget easier
Website:
- Fixed bug where on some iphones the map legend gradient would get split into multiple lines
- Added county level maps for Northern Ireland and Jamaica
- Added Caribbean Region to .com site
Api:
- Improved efficiency for CSV API calls
Website:
- Added county level maps for Scotland
- Added EU pages to support adding Ireland
- Fixed a bug where specific web requests would result in a 500 error instead of 404
888 Utilities tracked, 194 Million Customers Tracked!
Website:
- Added county level maps for England and Wales
- Fixed an issue where very rarely the maps would try to load before the DOM was ready causing them never to appear
Map Widget:
- Fixed a bug where the wrong color would sometimes be used for the third tier outage level on the country level maps
Website:
- Changes to allow for different substate area names other then County, like Parish for Louisiana
- Added Total out sum to Regions pages for each country
Api:
- Published new GeoJson endpoint version 1.6.1
- Changed "LineStrings" to "LineString" to align with GeoJson standards
842 Utilities tracked, 190 Million Customers Tracked!
Website:
- Changed shades of blue sitewide to improve contrast
- Changed colors for no data vs data errors, Gray = No Data, Black = Data Error
- Improved a few SEO items
- Improved database query efficiency for some pages
Website:
- Updated JQuery from 2.1.4 to 3.6.3
- Updated MapBox from 0.33.1 to 1.12.0
- Made a few improvements on how maps are loaded, and improved error handling around map load failures
- Added country level maps to https://poweroutage.com/uk
- Updated county level map legends so they match the maps' color interpolation
Map Widget:
- Updated JQuery from 2.1.4 to 3.6.3
- Updated MapBox from 0.33.1 to 1.12.0
Website:
- Improved About / FAQ / Major event pages
- Added a page specifically for utilities
Website:
- Improved layout for landing pages on mobile
- Changed fonts site wide to Noto Sans
- Improved state and utility comment and site wide alert formatting
- Changed date format site wide to yyyy-mm-dd hh:MM:ss tt
- Utilities are now disabled/hidden from the site after they are purchased or merged
Api:
- Released GeoJson version 1.6
- Added a county level GeoJson endpoint
Website:
- Minified some map geometry files where possible
- Redesigned the map legends across the site
- Redesigned the top outages table on the country pages
- Fixed a few spots on CA pages that still said State instead of Province
- Added a warning to all Ukraine related pages
- Fixed a few small SEO issues
Map Widget:
- Redesigned the map legends for the Map Widget API
- Added Canada and province Widget API endpoints
This system has been continuously updated since 2016, growing from tracking a handful of utilities to over 900 utilities and 200+ million customers across multiple countries. Contact us for detailed historical changelog information.