County annual report · FIPS 25027
2016 Worcester County, MA Power Outage Report
In 2016, customers in Worcester County, MA went without power for an average of 4.2 hours, a total of 896K customer-hours (Massachusetts average 2.3 hours). That ranks 2nd worst of 14 Massachusetts counties and 759th of 2,391 nationally.
Compared with MA, the US and 2015
Coverage line is EAGLE-I's share of Massachusetts customers tracked each year.
Biggest outages in Worcester County, 2016
The 10 outage episodes with the most customers out at once. Times are UTC.
| # | Started (UTC) | Ended (UTC) | Duration | Peak out | Customer-hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | February 5, 2016 13:45 | February 9, 2016 01:45 | 3d 12h | 18,833 | 162K |
| 2 | February 24, 2016 13:00 | February 26, 2016 08:30 | 1d 19h | 7,632 | 35K |
| 3 | August 12, 2016 20:45 | August 15, 2016 08:00 | 2d 11h | 7,629 | 47K |
| 4 | June 8, 2016 21:00 | June 9, 2016 01:45 | 4h 45m | 7,600 | 25K |
| 5 | July 22, 2016 18:30 | July 25, 2016 00:00 | 2d 5h | 6,825 | 78K |
| 6 | June 9, 2016 05:45 | June 10, 2016 02:30 | 20h 45m | 6,614 | 8,251 |
| 7 | October 21, 2016 11:00 | October 25, 2016 03:15 | 3d 16h | 5,077 | 65K |
| 8 | July 3, 2016 20:30 | July 4, 2016 22:30 | 1d 2h | 4,606 | 6,953 |
| 9 | December 12, 2016 12:30 | December 13, 2016 00:00 | 11h 30m | 3,787 | 2,908 |
| 10 | July 7, 2016 03:45 | July 9, 2016 08:00 | 2d 4h | 3,728 | 13K |
Outage episodes by size in 2016: 270 reached 100+ customers, 82 reached 1,000+ customers, 1 reached 10,000+ customers.
Utility reliability filed with the EIA
SAIDI (average outage time per customer) and SAIFI (average interruptions per customer) that utilities serving Worcester County reported on EIA Form 861 for 2016, or their most recent earlier filing. Utility-wide figures, not county-specific.
| Utility | EIA year | SAIDI | SAIFI | SAIDI excl. major events | SAIFI excl. major events |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Massachusetts Electric Co | 2014 | 2.4 hrs | 1.12 | 1.6 hrs | 0.96 |
| Unitil Energy Systems | 2016 | 2.7 hrs | 1.17 | 1.7 hrs | 0.98 |
| Fitchburg Gas & Elec Light Co | 2016 | 88 min | 1.45 | 88 min | 1.45 |
| Town of Sterling - (MA) | 2013 | 19 min | 0.28 | 8 min | 0.13 |
| Town of Ashburnham - (MA) | - | - | - | - | - |
| Town of Boylston - (MA) | - | - | - | - | - |
| Town of Holden - (MA) | - | - | - | - | - |
| Town of Paxton - (MA) | - | - | - | - | - |
| Town of Princeton - (MA) | - | - | - | - | - |
| Town of Shrewsbury - (MA) | - | - | - | - | - |
| Town of Templeton - (MA) | - | - | - | - | - |
| Town of West Boylston - (MA) | - | - | - | - | - |
About this data
- Outage figures come from DOE/ORNL EAGLE-I, which records customers out by county every 15 minutes. EAGLE-I tracked about n/a of Massachusetts's customers in 2016; utilities it does not see are not counted.
- Hours per customer = outage customer-minutes ÷ 212,617 customers (ORNL modeled county customer count), including major storm days. It is comparable across counties but is not the SAIDI a utility files.
- An outage event is a continuous stretch with customers out; counts at 100, 1,000 and 10,000+ use its peak.
- Years loaded: 2015–2025. Worcester County has data for 2015–2025.
Cite this report
MassOutage (massoutage.com), Worcester County, MA annual power outage report, 2016, data as of Oct 3, 2026 02:41 UTC, sources: DOE EAGLE-I (https://eagle-i.doe.gov/); EAGLE-I modeled customer counts (MCC) (https://figshare.com/); EIA Form 861 (utility reliability) (https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/eia861/). https://massoutage.com/reports/2016/massachusetts/worcester-county