County annual report · FIPS 19089
2021 Howard County, IA Power Outage Report
In 2021, customers in Howard County, IA went without power for an average of 21.8 hours, a total of 91K customer-hours (Iowa average 2.7 hours). That ranks 2nd worst of 99 Iowa counties and 393rd of 2,974 nationally.
Compared with IA, the US and 2020
Coverage line is EAGLE-I's share of Iowa customers tracked each year.
Biggest outages in Howard County, 2021
The 10 outage episodes with the most customers out at once. Times are UTC.
| # | Started (UTC) | Ended (UTC) | Duration | Peak out | Customer-hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | December 16, 2021 01:15 | December 18, 2021 00:30 | 1d 23h | 4,609 | 78K |
| 2 | July 28, 2021 04:00 | July 28, 2021 20:00 | 16h | 1,176 | 3,549 |
| 3 | December 26, 2021 08:30 | December 26, 2021 15:45 | 7h 15m | 440 | 846 |
| 4 | December 27, 2021 03:45 | December 27, 2021 04:45 | 1h | 440 | 330 |
| 5 | April 13, 2021 14:30 | April 13, 2021 18:00 | 3h 30m | 420 | 648 |
| 6 | December 11, 2021 22:15 | December 11, 2021 23:15 | 1h | 344 | 185 |
| 7 | August 28, 2021 00:15 | August 29, 2021 20:30 | 1d 20h | 188 | 538 |
| 8 | March 9, 2021 16:45 | March 9, 2021 21:00 | 4h 15m | 187 | 665 |
| 9 | July 6, 2021 17:15 | July 6, 2021 19:15 | 2h | 187 | 331 |
| 10 | July 6, 2021 20:15 | July 6, 2021 21:00 | 45m | 187 | 140 |
Outage episodes by size in 2021: 19 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 Howard County reported on EIA Form 861 for 2021, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Heartland Power Coop | 2021 | 3.2 hrs | 0.80 | 35 min | 0.39 |
| MiEnergy Cooperative | 2021 | 2.5 hrs | 1.30 | 83 min | 0.85 |
| Interstate Power and Light Co | - | - | - | - | - |
About this data
- Outage figures come from DOE/ORNL EAGLE-I, which records customers out by county every 15 minutes. EAGLE-I tracked about 91% of Iowa's customers in 2021; utilities it does not see are not counted.
- Hours per customer = outage customer-minutes ÷ 4,177 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. Howard County has data for 2015–2025.
Cite this report
MassOutage (massoutage.com), Howard County, IA annual power outage report, 2021, 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/2021/iowa/howard-county