County annual report · FIPS 38103
2021 Wells County, ND Power Outage Report
In 2021, customers in Wells County, ND went without power for an average of 14.2 hours, a total of 21K customer-hours (North Dakota average 1.0 hours). That ranks 1st worst of 51 North Dakota counties and 593rd of 2,974 nationally.
Compared with ND, the US and 2020
Coverage line is EAGLE-I's share of North Dakota customers tracked each year.
Biggest outages in Wells County, 2021
The 4 outage episodes with the most customers out at once. Times are UTC.
| # | Started (UTC) | Ended (UTC) | Duration | Peak out | Customer-hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | November 29, 2021 16:15 | November 30, 2021 11:00 | 18h 45m | 1,072 | 20K |
| 2 | December 9, 2021 08:00 | December 9, 2021 08:30 | 30m | 212 | 106 |
| 3 | March 22, 2021 14:15 | March 22, 2021 16:45 | 2h 30m | 89 | 223 |
| 4 | April 3, 2021 17:30 | April 3, 2021 19:15 | 1h 45m | 72 | 126 |
Outage episodes by size in 2021: 2 reached 100+ customers, 1 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 Wells 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Otter Tail Power Co | 2021 | 86 min | 1.13 | 74 min | 1.09 |
| Northern Plains Electric Coop | 2021 | 2.5 hrs | 1.31 | 2.0 hrs | 1.19 |
| Verendrye Electric Coop Inc | 2021 | 88 min | 1.35 | 88 min | 1.35 |
| WAPA-- Western Area Power Administration | - | - | - | - | - |
About this data
- Outage figures come from DOE/ORNL EAGLE-I, which records customers out by county every 15 minutes. EAGLE-I tracked about 66% of North Dakota's customers in 2021; utilities it does not see are not counted.
- Hours per customer = outage customer-minutes ÷ 1,448 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. Wells County has data for 2020–2025.
Cite this report
MassOutage (massoutage.com), Wells County, ND 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/north-dakota/wells-county