County annual report · FIPS 30015
2020 Chouteau County, MT Power Outage Report
In 2020, customers in Chouteau County, MT went without power for an average of 16.1 hours, a total of 32K customer-hours (Montana average 5.6 hours). That ranks 7th worst of 50 Montana counties and 519th of 3,019 nationally.
Compared with MT, the US
Coverage line is EAGLE-I's share of Montana customers tracked each year.
Biggest outages in Chouteau 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 | February 1, 2020 17:45 | February 3, 2020 03:45 | 1d 10h | 1,955 | 12K |
| 2 | September 7, 2020 15:00 | September 7, 2020 17:00 | 2h | 849 | 1,486 |
| 3 | June 8, 2020 04:30 | June 11, 2020 22:15 | 3d 17h | 788 | 3,685 |
| 4 | December 20, 2020 18:15 | December 21, 2020 02:45 | 8h 30m | 687 | 5,358 |
| 5 | January 4, 2020 20:45 | January 5, 2020 00:30 | 3h 45m | 468 | 1,170 |
| 6 | October 30, 2020 21:30 | October 31, 2020 01:15 | 3h 45m | 468 | 1,755 |
| 7 | April 11, 2020 21:15 | April 12, 2020 07:15 | 10h | 463 | 1,443 |
| 8 | May 1, 2020 12:15 | May 1, 2020 16:30 | 4h 15m | 190 | 649 |
| 9 | September 9, 2020 22:15 | September 10, 2020 00:15 | 2h | 119 | 212 |
| 10 | October 13, 2020 14:15 | October 13, 2020 17:00 | 2h 45m | 97 | 263 |
Outage episodes by size in 2020: 9 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 Chouteau 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 |
| WAPA-- Western Area Power Administration | - | - | - | - | - |
| NorthWestern Energy | - | - | - | - | - |
| Fergus Electric Coop, Inc | - | - | - | - | - |
| Sun River Electric Coop, Inc | - | - | - | - | - |
| Hill County 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 ÷ 1,959 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. Chouteau County has data for 2020–2025.
Cite this report
MassOutage (massoutage.com), Chouteau 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/chouteau-county