County annual report · FIPS 30089
2018 Sanders County, MT Power Outage Report
In 2018, customers in Sanders County, MT went without power for an average of 2.0 hours, a total of 15K customer-hours (Montana average 1.9 hours). That ranks 7th worst of 20 Montana counties and 1871st of 2,798 nationally.
Compared with MT, the US and 2017
Coverage line is EAGLE-I's share of Montana customers tracked each year.
Biggest outages in Sanders 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 | May 7, 2018 23:00 | May 7, 2018 23:45 | 45m | 1,346 | 1,010 |
| 2 | August 6, 2018 14:45 | August 6, 2018 17:45 | 3h | 863 | 1,067 |
| 3 | July 22, 2018 16:45 | July 22, 2018 18:00 | 1h 15m | 862 | 1,078 |
| 4 | July 24, 2018 18:30 | July 24, 2018 20:00 | 1h 30m | 862 | 1,267 |
| 5 | May 7, 2018 03:00 | May 7, 2018 11:15 | 8h 15m | 610 | 2,018 |
| 6 | December 8, 2018 12:45 | December 8, 2018 21:15 | 8h 30m | 407 | 1,353 |
| 7 | July 2, 2018 22:30 | July 2, 2018 23:30 | 1h | 268 | 181 |
| 8 | October 3, 2018 06:00 | October 3, 2018 10:30 | 4h 30m | 238 | 431 |
| 9 | April 26, 2018 15:15 | April 26, 2018 16:00 | 45m | 221 | 166 |
| 10 | June 5, 2018 20:15 | June 5, 2018 20:30 | 15m | 170 | 43 |
Outage episodes by size in 2018: 16 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 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NorthWestern Energy LLC - (MT) | 2018 | 1.7 hrs | 1.08 | 1.7 hrs | 1.08 |
| Avista Corp | 2018 | 2.6 hrs | 0.89 | 2.2 hrs | 0.81 |
| Flathead Electric Coop Inc | 2018 | 2.8 hrs | 1.56 | 2.8 hrs | 1.56 |
| 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 16% of Montana's customers in 2018; 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, 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/montana/sanders-county