County annual report · FIPS 25017
2018 Middlesex County, MA Power Outage Report
In 2018, customers in Middlesex County, MA went without power for an average of 16.3 hours, a total of 7.1M customer-hours (Massachusetts average 12.6 hours). That ranks 5th worst of 14 Massachusetts counties and 345th of 2,798 nationally.
Compared with MA, the US and 2017
Coverage line is EAGLE-I's share of Massachusetts customers tracked each year.
Biggest outages in Middlesex County, 2018
The 10 outage episodes with the most customers out at once. Times are UTC.
| # | Started (UTC) | Ended (UTC) | Duration | Peak out | Customer-hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | March 7, 2018 10:00 | March 27, 2018 00:15 | 19d 14h | 148,898 | 5.7M |
| 2 | March 2, 2018 08:30 | March 6, 2018 01:00 | 3d 16h | 25,165 | 430K |
| 3 | July 1, 2018 07:30 | July 5, 2018 05:45 | 3d 22h | 9,174 | 37K |
| 4 | August 17, 2018 12:45 | August 18, 2018 11:00 | 22h 15m | 7,699 | 18K |
| 5 | June 24, 2018 23:00 | June 27, 2018 07:45 | 2d 8h | 7,546 | 25K |
| 6 | November 3, 2018 04:30 | November 5, 2018 00:30 | 1d 20h | 6,713 | 35K |
| 7 | May 18, 2018 05:15 | May 18, 2018 05:30 | 15m | 6,684 | 1,671 |
| 8 | April 9, 2018 04:15 | April 10, 2018 03:00 | 22h 45m | 6,282 | 6,561 |
| 9 | June 14, 2018 15:30 | June 15, 2018 05:00 | 13h 30m | 4,676 | 9,916 |
| 10 | May 25, 2018 10:15 | May 26, 2018 20:15 | 1d 10h | 4,657 | 3,239 |
Outage episodes by size in 2018: 261 reached 100+ customers, 81 reached 1,000+ customers, 2 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 Middlesex County reported on EIA Form 861 for 2018, 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 |
| NSTAR Electric Company | 2018 | 16.2 hrs | 1.68 | 85 min | 0.83 |
| Unitil Energy Systems | 2018 | 8.2 hrs | 1.94 | 1.9 hrs | 1.20 |
| Fitchburg Gas & Elec Light Co | 2018 | 2.3 hrs | 1.89 | 1.8 hrs | 1.57 |
| Town of Reading - (MA) | 2018 | 66 min | 0.53 | 19 min | 0.36 |
| Town of Belmont - (MA) | 2018 | 57 min | 0.53 | 57 min | 0.53 |
| Massachusetts Bay Trans Authority | - | - | - | - | - |
| Town of Concord - (MA) | - | - | - | - | - |
| Town of Groton - (MA) | - | - | - | - | - |
| Town of Hudson - (MA) | - | - | - | - | - |
| Town of Littleton - (MA) | - | - | - | - | - |
| Town of Wakefield - (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 89% of Massachusetts's customers in 2018; utilities it does not see are not counted.
- Hours per customer = outage customer-minutes ÷ 434,426 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. Middlesex County has data for 2015–2025.
Cite this report
MassOutage (massoutage.com), Middlesex County, MA annual power outage report, 2018, 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/2018/massachusetts/middlesex-county