County annual report · FIPS 46017
2020 Buffalo County, SD Power Outage Report
In 2020, customers in Buffalo County, SD went without power for an average of 5.0 hours, a total of 2,987 customer-hours (South Dakota average 4.6 hours). That ranks 22nd worst of 62 South Dakota counties and 1387th of 3,019 nationally.
Compared with SD, the US and 2019
Coverage line is EAGLE-I's share of South Dakota customers tracked each year.
Biggest outages in Buffalo 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 16, 2020 14:15 | September 16, 2020 17:30 | 3h 15m | 633 | 1,901 |
| 2 | September 15, 2020 16:30 | September 15, 2020 18:45 | 2h 15m | 165 | 331 |
| 3 | April 21, 2020 17:30 | April 21, 2020 19:00 | 1h 30m | 59 | 74 |
| 4 | March 25, 2020 00:00 | March 25, 2020 01:45 | 1h 45m | 57 | 73 |
| 5 | January 1, 2020 20:00 | January 1, 2020 22:00 | 2h | 56 | 85 |
| 6 | December 27, 2020 08:15 | December 27, 2020 11:00 | 2h 45m | 55 | 151 |
| 7 | May 19, 2020 22:30 | May 19, 2020 23:30 | 1h | 51 | 38 |
| 8 | August 28, 2020 05:30 | August 28, 2020 14:30 | 9h | 16 | 95 |
| 9 | June 18, 2020 04:00 | June 18, 2020 12:30 | 8h 30m | 10 | 21 |
| 10 | May 12, 2020 01:00 | May 12, 2020 03:30 | 2h 30m | 6 | 15 |
Outage episodes by size in 2020: 2 reached 100+ customers, 0 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 Buffalo 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WAPA-- Western Area Power Administration | - | - | - | - | - |
| Dakota Energy Coop Inc | - | - | - | - | - |
| Central Electric Coop, Inc - (SD) | - | - | - | - | - |
About this data
- Outage figures come from DOE/ORNL EAGLE-I, which records customers out by county every 15 minutes. EAGLE-I tracked about 79% of South Dakota's customers in 2020; utilities it does not see are not counted.
- Hours per customer = outage customer-minutes ÷ 592 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. Buffalo County has data for 2019–2025.
Cite this report
MassOutage (massoutage.com), Buffalo County, SD 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/). https://massoutage.com/reports/2020/south-dakota/buffalo-county