County annual report · FIPS 46017
2021 Buffalo County, SD Power Outage Report
In 2021, customers in Buffalo County, SD went without power for an average of 4.8 hours, a total of 2,816 customer-hours (South Dakota average 3.4 hours). That ranks 13th worst of 61 South Dakota counties and 1373rd of 2,974 nationally.
Compared with SD, the US and 2020
Coverage line is EAGLE-I's share of South Dakota customers tracked each year.
Biggest outages in Buffalo 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 | April 19, 2021 16:30 | April 19, 2021 17:45 | 1h 15m | 639 | 799 |
| 2 | July 20, 2021 13:45 | July 20, 2021 14:15 | 30m | 482 | 227 |
| 3 | July 22, 2021 14:30 | July 22, 2021 16:30 | 2h | 482 | 964 |
| 4 | March 15, 2021 12:30 | March 15, 2021 18:15 | 5h 45m | 59 | 268 |
| 5 | February 3, 2021 17:45 | February 3, 2021 21:15 | 3h 30m | 52 | 102 |
| 6 | August 4, 2021 23:30 | August 5, 2021 01:30 | 2h | 50 | 45 |
| 7 | July 19, 2021 06:15 | July 19, 2021 10:30 | 4h 15m | 46 | 92 |
| 8 | January 15, 2021 18:00 | January 15, 2021 19:45 | 1h 45m | 40 | 60 |
| 9 | May 8, 2021 14:15 | May 8, 2021 16:00 | 1h 45m | 18 | 32 |
| 10 | March 11, 2021 17:00 | March 11, 2021 18:15 | 1h 15m | 11 | 9 |
Outage episodes by size in 2021: 3 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 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 2021; 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, 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/). https://massoutage.com/reports/2021/south-dakota/buffalo-county