County annual report · FIPS 30027
2020 Fergus County, MT Power Outage Report
In 2020, customers in Fergus County, MT went without power for an average of 7.3 hours, a total of 40K customer-hours (Montana average 5.6 hours). That ranks 18th worst of 50 Montana counties and 1038th 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 Fergus 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 | April 11, 2020 16:30 | April 12, 2020 06:15 | 13h 45m | 4,252 | 17K |
| 2 | May 7, 2020 07:45 | May 8, 2020 06:30 | 22h 45m | 1,796 | 11K |
| 3 | November 4, 2020 10:15 | November 4, 2020 12:15 | 2h | 1,330 | 2,660 |
| 4 | January 18, 2020 15:45 | January 18, 2020 19:30 | 3h 45m | 479 | 970 |
| 5 | May 4, 2020 15:15 | May 4, 2020 22:45 | 7h 30m | 251 | 299 |
| 6 | July 15, 2020 21:30 | July 15, 2020 22:30 | 1h | 240 | 240 |
| 7 | August 26, 2020 01:45 | August 26, 2020 07:15 | 5h 30m | 200 | 955 |
| 8 | August 12, 2020 06:15 | August 12, 2020 09:00 | 2h 45m | 194 | 534 |
| 9 | May 27, 2020 21:45 | May 28, 2020 01:00 | 3h 15m | 161 | 476 |
| 10 | January 14, 2020 02:00 | January 14, 2020 05:00 | 3h | 105 | 315 |
Outage episodes by size in 2020: 10 reached 100+ customers, 3 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 Fergus 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 |
| NorthWestern Energy | - | - | - | - | - |
| Fergus 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 ÷ 5,384 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. Fergus County has data for 2019–2025.
Cite this report
MassOutage (massoutage.com), Fergus 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/fergus-county