County annual report · FIPS 19011
2020 Benton County, IA Power Outage Report
In 2020, customers in Benton County, IA went without power for an average of 92.1 hours, a total of 1.2M customer-hours (Iowa average 27.4 hours). That ranks 6th worst of 99 Iowa counties and 71st of 3,019 nationally.
Compared with IA, the US and 2019
Coverage line is EAGLE-I's share of Iowa customers tracked each year.
Biggest outages in Benton County, 2020
The 10 outage episodes with the most customers out at once. Times are UTC.
| # | Started (UTC) | Ended (UTC) | Duration | Peak out | Customer-hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | August 9, 2020 16:00 | August 27, 2020 21:00 | 18d 5h | 10,178 | 1.2M |
| 2 | July 11, 2020 15:30 | July 11, 2020 17:15 | 1h 45m | 1,200 | 1,366 |
| 3 | September 6, 2020 11:30 | September 7, 2020 01:15 | 13h 45m | 1,144 | 3,899 |
| 4 | October 11, 2020 16:00 | October 12, 2020 12:00 | 20h | 1,143 | 3,000 |
| 5 | March 28, 2020 23:45 | March 29, 2020 16:15 | 16h 30m | 747 | 7,013 |
| 6 | July 11, 2020 21:30 | July 13, 2020 12:30 | 1d 15h | 530 | 1,214 |
| 7 | October 14, 2020 04:00 | October 14, 2020 06:30 | 2h 30m | 384 | 129 |
| 8 | March 31, 2020 09:30 | March 31, 2020 11:00 | 1h 30m | 310 | 465 |
| 9 | December 17, 2020 16:15 | December 17, 2020 16:30 | 15m | 307 | 77 |
| 10 | February 17, 2020 14:45 | February 17, 2020 16:30 | 1h 45m | 292 | 297 |
Outage episodes by size in 2020: 24 reached 100+ customers, 4 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 Benton County reported on EIA Form 861 for 2020, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| East-Central Iowa Rural Elec Coop | 2020 | 14.1 hrs | 1.01 | 54 min | 0.59 |
| T I P Rural Electric Coop | 2018 | 2.5 hrs | 1.33 | 2.5 hrs | 1.33 |
| Linn County REC | 2020 | 58.0 hrs | 3.02 | 2.6 hrs | 1.74 |
| Interstate Power and Light Co | - | - | - | - | - |
| Alliant Energy (Interstate Power & Light) | - | - | - | - | - |
| City of Traer - (IA) | - | - | - | - | - |
| City of Vinton - (IA) | - | - | - | - | - |
About this data
- Outage figures come from DOE/ORNL EAGLE-I, which records customers out by county every 15 minutes. EAGLE-I tracked about 91% of Iowa's customers in 2020; utilities it does not see are not counted.
- Hours per customer = outage customer-minutes ÷ 13,498 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. Benton County has data for 2015–2025.
Cite this report
MassOutage (massoutage.com), Benton County, IA annual power outage report, 2020, 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/2020/iowa/benton-county