County annual report · FIPS 30071
2021 Phillips County, MT Power Outage Report
In 2021, customers in Phillips County, MT went without power for an average of 13.7 hours, a total of 27K customer-hours (Montana average 5.0 hours). That ranks 10th worst of 51 Montana counties and 611th of 2,974 nationally.
Compared with MT, the US and 2020
Coverage line is EAGLE-I's share of Montana customers tracked each year.
Biggest outages in Phillips 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 | March 8, 2021 16:30 | March 8, 2021 18:30 | 2h | 2,796 | 3,840 |
| 2 | November 5, 2021 02:45 | November 5, 2021 10:00 | 7h 15m | 2,330 | 16K |
| 3 | December 26, 2021 15:00 | December 26, 2021 23:45 | 8h 45m | 1,717 | 1,767 |
| 4 | July 6, 2021 13:30 | July 6, 2021 17:45 | 4h 15m | 702 | 1,755 |
| 5 | May 6, 2021 23:30 | May 7, 2021 03:30 | 4h | 380 | 667 |
| 6 | January 13, 2021 22:30 | January 14, 2021 03:15 | 4h 45m | 353 | 1,213 |
| 7 | June 10, 2021 07:45 | June 10, 2021 11:30 | 3h 45m | 200 | 602 |
| 8 | December 29, 2021 02:00 | December 29, 2021 05:00 | 3h | 198 | 516 |
| 9 | August 3, 2021 17:30 | August 3, 2021 19:00 | 1h 30m | 50 | 44 |
| 10 | March 29, 2021 11:30 | March 29, 2021 12:30 | 1h | 36 | 36 |
Outage episodes by size in 2021: 8 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 Phillips 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NorthWestern Energy LLC - (MT) | 2021 | 2.5 hrs | 1.37 | 2.1 hrs | 1.18 |
| WAPA-- Western Area Power Administration | - | - | - | - | - |
| NorthWestern Energy | - | - | - | - | - |
| NorVal Electric Cooperative, Inc | - | - | - | - | - |
| Big Flat 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 2021; utilities it does not see are not counted.
- Hours per customer = outage customer-minutes ÷ 1,992 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. Phillips County has data for 2019–2025.
Cite this report
MassOutage (massoutage.com), Phillips County, MT 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/montana/phillips-county