County annual report · FIPS 30089
2017 Sanders County, MT Power Outage Report
In 2017, customers in Sanders County, MT went without power for an average of 2.7 hours, a total of 19K customer-hours (Montana average 2.7 hours). That ranks 3rd worst of 19 Montana counties and 1430th of 2,786 nationally.
Compared with MT, the US and 2016
Coverage line is EAGLE-I's share of Montana customers tracked each year.
Biggest outages in Sanders County, 2017
The 10 outage episodes with the most customers out at once. Times are UTC.
| # | Started (UTC) | Ended (UTC) | Duration | Peak out | Customer-hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | October 17, 2017 21:00 | October 18, 2017 11:30 | 14h 30m | 1,041 | 3,891 |
| 2 | November 3, 2017 05:15 | November 4, 2017 05:30 | 1d | 782 | 3,446 |
| 3 | November 23, 2017 12:45 | November 24, 2017 07:30 | 18h 45m | 689 | 3,111 |
| 4 | November 5, 2017 07:00 | November 6, 2017 23:15 | 1d 16h | 658 | 2,274 |
| 5 | July 15, 2017 16:00 | July 15, 2017 19:15 | 3h 15m | 416 | 316 |
| 6 | October 18, 2017 21:45 | October 18, 2017 22:00 | 15m | 348 | 87 |
| 7 | September 18, 2017 16:45 | September 18, 2017 17:15 | 30m | 330 | 83 |
| 8 | September 29, 2017 21:30 | September 29, 2017 22:45 | 1h 15m | 330 | 413 |
| 9 | November 21, 2017 17:30 | November 21, 2017 19:45 | 2h 15m | 219 | 439 |
| 10 | June 7, 2017 01:45 | June 7, 2017 03:45 | 2h | 201 | 153 |
Outage episodes by size in 2017: 15 reached 100+ customers, 1 reached 1,000+ customers, 0 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 Sanders County reported on EIA Form 861 for 2017, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NorthWestern Energy LLC - (MT) | 2017 | 2.6 hrs | 1.38 | 2.4 hrs | 1.30 |
| Avista Corp | 2017 | 3.7 hrs | 1.38 | 3.4 hrs | 1.27 |
| Flathead Electric Coop Inc | 2017 | 6.1 hrs | 2.20 | 3.5 hrs | 1.48 |
| NorthWestern Energy | - | - | - | - | - |
| Northern Lights, Inc | - | - | - | - | - |
| USBIA-Mission Valley Power | - | - | - | - | - |
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 Montana's customers in 2017; utilities it does not see are not counted.
- Hours per customer = outage customer-minutes ÷ 7,314 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. Sanders County has data for 2015–2025.
Cite this report
MassOutage (massoutage.com), Sanders County, MT annual power outage report, 2017, 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/2017/montana/sanders-county