County annual report · FIPS 25027
2018 Worcester County, MA Power Outage Report
In 2018, customers in Worcester County, MA went without power for an average of 11.4 hours, a total of 2.4M customer-hours (Massachusetts average 12.6 hours). That ranks 8th worst of 14 Massachusetts counties and 482nd 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 Worcester 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 20:15 | March 11, 2018 12:30 | 3d 16h | 64,022 | 1.4M |
| 2 | October 23, 2018 17:15 | October 24, 2018 17:45 | 1d | 15,602 | 9,965 |
| 3 | March 1, 2018 21:00 | March 6, 2018 01:00 | 4d 4h | 11,559 | 246K |
| 4 | October 11, 2018 05:30 | October 13, 2018 01:30 | 1d 20h | 10,642 | 39K |
| 5 | November 3, 2018 09:45 | November 5, 2018 13:15 | 2d 3h | 7,930 | 28K |
| 6 | April 4, 2018 23:30 | April 6, 2018 09:15 | 1d 9h | 7,716 | 70K |
| 7 | October 26, 2018 23:45 | October 28, 2018 20:00 | 1d 20h | 5,916 | 33K |
| 8 | June 6, 2018 04:30 | June 7, 2018 09:30 | 1d 5h | 4,737 | 8,157 |
| 9 | September 12, 2018 23:00 | September 13, 2018 01:30 | 2h 30m | 4,525 | 4,903 |
| 10 | October 16, 2018 03:45 | October 17, 2018 09:15 | 1d 5h | 4,493 | 20K |
Outage episodes by size in 2018: 292 reached 100+ customers, 85 reached 1,000+ customers, 4 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 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 |
| 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 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 89% of Massachusetts's customers in 2018; 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, 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/worcester-county