County annual report · FIPS 30089
2020 Sanders County, MT Power Outage Report
In 2020, customers in Sanders County, MT went without power for an average of 18.6 hours, a total of 136K customer-hours (Montana average 5.6 hours). That ranks 5th worst of 50 Montana counties and 464th 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 Sanders 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 7, 2020 14:30 | September 10, 2020 08:15 | 2d 17h | 3,568 | 63K |
| 2 | March 14, 2020 02:45 | March 15, 2020 15:45 | 1d 13h | 1,545 | 3,504 |
| 3 | September 17, 2020 22:45 | September 18, 2020 01:00 | 2h 15m | 1,497 | 1,731 |
| 4 | November 10, 2020 21:45 | November 10, 2020 23:30 | 1h 45m | 1,446 | 392 |
| 5 | November 9, 2020 15:30 | November 9, 2020 16:00 | 30m | 1,426 | 713 |
| 6 | February 1, 2020 16:15 | February 3, 2020 01:30 | 1d 9h | 1,286 | 13K |
| 7 | May 31, 2020 04:15 | June 1, 2020 02:15 | 22h | 1,011 | 6,167 |
| 8 | March 4, 2020 10:45 | March 5, 2020 02:00 | 15h 15m | 998 | 3,818 |
| 9 | September 3, 2020 03:00 | September 3, 2020 05:45 | 2h 45m | 812 | 1,364 |
| 10 | October 18, 2020 07:00 | October 18, 2020 12:15 | 5h 15m | 786 | 1,987 |
Outage episodes by size in 2020: 48 reached 100+ customers, 7 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 Sanders 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 |
| Avista Corp | 2020 | 5.1 hrs | 1.56 | 2.2 hrs | 0.91 |
| Flathead Electric Coop Inc | 2020 | 14.5 hrs | 2.38 | 2.9 hrs | 1.02 |
| NorthWestern Energy | - | - | - | - | - |
| Northern Lights, Inc | - | - | - | - | - |
| USBIA-Mission Valley Power | - | - | - | - | - |
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 ÷ 7,314 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. Sanders County has data for 2015–2025.
Cite this report
MassOutage (massoutage.com), Sanders 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/sanders-county