County annual report · FIPS 30009
2020 Carbon County, MT Power Outage Report
In 2020, customers in Carbon County, MT went without power for an average of 4.3 hours, a total of 28K customer-hours (Montana average 5.6 hours). That ranks 27th worst of 50 Montana counties and 1529th of 3,019 nationally.
Compared with MT, the US and 2019
Coverage line is EAGLE-I's share of Montana customers tracked each year.
Biggest outages in Carbon 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 26, 2020 15:45 | August 26, 2020 22:00 | 6h 15m | 1,149 | 1,280 |
| 2 | June 16, 2020 13:15 | June 17, 2020 07:30 | 18h 15m | 1,012 | 3,035 |
| 3 | February 6, 2020 23:15 | February 7, 2020 03:00 | 3h 45m | 996 | 1,885 |
| 4 | November 8, 2020 11:45 | November 10, 2020 01:30 | 1d 13h | 948 | 5,007 |
| 5 | May 7, 2020 18:00 | May 7, 2020 19:00 | 1h | 906 | 906 |
| 6 | June 9, 2020 17:15 | June 10, 2020 02:15 | 9h | 882 | 895 |
| 7 | July 1, 2020 15:45 | July 2, 2020 14:45 | 23h | 531 | 1,109 |
| 8 | September 7, 2020 21:30 | September 8, 2020 23:45 | 1d 2h | 502 | 1,869 |
| 9 | May 7, 2020 20:00 | May 8, 2020 00:30 | 4h 30m | 425 | 535 |
| 10 | May 1, 2020 18:00 | May 1, 2020 19:45 | 1h 45m | 424 | 636 |
Outage episodes by size in 2020: 25 reached 100+ customers, 2 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 Carbon 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NorthWestern Energy LLC - (MT) | 2020 | 2.8 hrs | 1.13 | 2.0 hrs | 1.02 |
| Big Horn Rural Electric Co | 2018 | 4.0 hrs | 1.80 | - | - |
| Flathead Electric Coop Inc | 2020 | 14.5 hrs | 2.38 | 2.9 hrs | 1.02 |
| WAPA-- Western Area Power Administration | - | - | - | - | - |
| NorthWestern Energy | - | - | - | - | - |
| Yellowstone Valley Elec Co-op | - | - | - | - | - |
| Beartooth Electric Coop, Inc | - | - | - | - | - |
About this data
- Outage figures come from DOE/ORNL EAGLE-I, which records customers out by county every 15 minutes. EAGLE-I tracked about 76% of Montana's customers in 2020; utilities it does not see are not counted.
- Hours per customer = outage customer-minutes ÷ 6,512 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. Carbon County has data for 2016, 2018–2025.
Cite this report
MassOutage (massoutage.com), Carbon County, MT 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/montana/carbon-county