County annual report · FIPS 25017
2020 Middlesex County, MA Power Outage Report
In 2020, customers in Middlesex County, MA went without power for an average of 4.7 hours, a total of 2.0M customer-hours (Massachusetts average 5.3 hours). That ranks 9th worst of 14 Massachusetts counties and 1453rd of 3,019 nationally.
Compared with MA, the US and 2019
Coverage line is EAGLE-I's share of Massachusetts customers tracked each year.
Biggest outages in Middlesex 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 | September 30, 2020 07:15 | October 15, 2020 05:15 | 14d 22h | 31,359 | 475K |
| 2 | April 13, 2020 10:45 | April 17, 2020 05:15 | 3d 18h | 25,258 | 239K |
| 3 | August 3, 2020 04:45 | August 8, 2020 09:45 | 5d 5h | 17,121 | 214K |
| 4 | May 16, 2020 00:15 | May 18, 2020 04:15 | 2d 4h | 15,420 | 214K |
| 5 | August 23, 2020 10:30 | August 27, 2020 04:30 | 3d 18h | 14,944 | 116K |
| 6 | December 5, 2020 15:45 | December 7, 2020 02:45 | 1d 11h | 14,217 | 70K |
| 7 | November 30, 2020 14:15 | December 3, 2020 04:00 | 2d 13h | 9,122 | 49K |
| 8 | May 9, 2020 11:30 | May 10, 2020 22:30 | 1d 11h | 6,530 | 19K |
| 9 | March 23, 2020 23:00 | March 25, 2020 02:00 | 1d 3h | 5,401 | 14K |
| 10 | June 13, 2020 09:30 | June 14, 2020 02:00 | 16h 30m | 4,725 | 3,150 |
Outage episodes by size in 2020: 289 reached 100+ customers, 75 reached 1,000+ customers, 6 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 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Massachusetts Electric Co | 2014 | 2.4 hrs | 1.12 | 1.6 hrs | 0.96 |
| NSTAR Electric Company | 2020 | 3.9 hrs | 1.14 | 65 min | 0.71 |
| Unitil Energy Systems | 2020 | 2.9 hrs | 1.86 | 2.0 hrs | 1.60 |
| Fitchburg Gas & Elec Light Co | 2020 | 4.3 hrs | 2.84 | 65 min | 1.27 |
| Town of Reading - (MA) | 2020 | 38 min | 0.35 | 19 min | 0.23 |
| 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 94% of Massachusetts's customers in 2020; 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, 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/massachusetts/middlesex-county