County annual report · FIPS 19153
2020 Polk County, IA Power Outage Report
In 2020, customers in Polk County, IA went without power for an average of 20.8 hours, a total of 6.0M customer-hours (Iowa average 27.4 hours). That ranks 18th worst of 99 Iowa counties and 415th 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 Polk 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 10, 2020 13:45 | August 21, 2020 05:15 | 10d 15h | 114,873 | 5.6M |
| 2 | July 14, 2020 12:00 | July 16, 2020 01:00 | 1d 13h | 13,110 | 45K |
| 3 | September 7, 2020 13:30 | September 10, 2020 12:30 | 2d 23h | 13,054 | 18K |
| 4 | March 8, 2020 14:15 | March 8, 2020 22:15 | 8h | 9,134 | 6,347 |
| 5 | April 25, 2020 13:00 | April 25, 2020 22:30 | 9h 30m | 7,510 | 13K |
| 6 | November 16, 2020 14:30 | November 16, 2020 20:15 | 5h 45m | 6,506 | 1,748 |
| 7 | August 23, 2020 12:15 | August 24, 2020 12:00 | 23h 45m | 6,204 | 6,675 |
| 8 | June 22, 2020 06:00 | June 23, 2020 05:45 | 23h 45m | 6,005 | 16K |
| 9 | June 5, 2020 10:00 | June 6, 2020 09:30 | 23h 30m | 5,901 | 14K |
| 10 | July 2, 2020 11:30 | July 2, 2020 22:15 | 10h 45m | 5,343 | 1,430 |
Outage episodes by size in 2020: 142 reached 100+ customers, 69 reached 1,000+ customers, 3 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 Polk 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MidAmerican Energy Co | 2020 | 18.3 hrs | 1.43 | 82 min | 0.79 |
| Consumers Energy Coop - (IA) | 2020 | 35.0 hrs | 2.79 | 69 min | 1.26 |
| Interstate Power and Light Co | - | - | - | - | - |
| Midland Power Coop | - | - | - | - | - |
| Waverly Municipal Elec Utility | - | - | - | - | - |
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 ÷ 287,095 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. Polk County has data for 2015–2025.
Cite this report
MassOutage (massoutage.com), Polk 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/polk-county