County annual report · FIPS 27147
2021 Steele County, MN Power Outage Report
In 2021, customers in Steele County, MN went without power for an average of 0.5 hours, a total of 8,849 customer-hours (Minnesota average 2.1 hours). That ranks 60th worst of 79 Minnesota counties and 2808th of 2,974 nationally.
Compared with MN, the US and 2020
Coverage line is EAGLE-I's share of Minnesota customers tracked each year.
Biggest outages in Steele 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 01:45 | December 17, 2021 15:30 | 1d 13h | 396 | 6,153 |
| 2 | May 25, 2021 05:45 | May 25, 2021 06:00 | 15m | 308 | 77 |
| 3 | July 16, 2021 00:45 | July 16, 2021 05:00 | 4h 15m | 308 | 1,309 |
| 4 | June 8, 2021 23:00 | June 9, 2021 00:45 | 1h 45m | 283 | 354 |
| 5 | September 29, 2021 14:00 | September 29, 2021 15:15 | 1h 15m | 224 | 280 |
| 6 | June 24, 2021 01:15 | June 24, 2021 02:30 | 1h 15m | 139 | 174 |
| 7 | December 2, 2021 14:30 | December 2, 2021 15:45 | 1h 15m | 138 | 173 |
| 8 | September 19, 2021 21:45 | September 20, 2021 05:00 | 7h 15m | 45 | 162 |
| 9 | March 29, 2021 22:30 | March 30, 2021 00:00 | 1h 30m | 43 | 63 |
| 10 | November 14, 2021 01:00 | November 14, 2021 02:00 | 1h | 14 | 14 |
Outage episodes by size in 2021: 7 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 Steele 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Northern States Power Co - Minnesota | 2021 | 1.8 hrs | 0.82 | 77 min | 0.74 |
| Steele-Waseca Cooperative Electric | 2021 | 1.8 hrs | 0.77 | 68 min | 0.61 |
| Freeborn Mower Electric Cooperative | 2021 | 2.6 hrs | 1.10 | 76 min | 0.73 |
| City of Owatonna - (MN) | 2021 | 2.1 hrs | 1.81 | 29 min | 0.30 |
| City of Blooming Prairie - (MN) | - | - | - | - | - |
About this data
- Outage figures come from DOE/ORNL EAGLE-I, which records customers out by county every 15 minutes. EAGLE-I tracked about 80% of Minnesota's customers in 2021; utilities it does not see are not counted.
- Hours per customer = outage customer-minutes ÷ 17,365 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. Steele County has data for 2015–2025.
Cite this report
MassOutage (massoutage.com), Steele County, MN 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/minnesota/steele-county