County annual report · FIPS 46089
2021 McPherson County, SD Power Outage Report
In 2021, customers in McPherson County, SD went without power for an average of 37.9 hours, a total of 46K customer-hours (South Dakota average 3.4 hours). That ranks 3rd worst of 61 South Dakota counties and 233rd 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 McPherson 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 2, 2021 22:15 | March 2, 2021 22:30 | 15m | 652 | 163 |
| 2 | February 3, 2021 22:15 | February 3, 2021 23:15 | 1h | 643 | 306 |
| 3 | October 14, 2021 05:45 | October 14, 2021 06:30 | 45m | 609 | 457 |
| 4 | February 4, 2021 00:00 | February 4, 2021 04:00 | 4h | 608 | 2,417 |
| 5 | October 21, 2021 03:15 | October 21, 2021 04:15 | 1h | 569 | 285 |
| 6 | October 24, 2021 05:45 | October 27, 2021 21:15 | 3d 15h | 506 | 22K |
| 7 | February 13, 2021 23:45 | February 14, 2021 01:15 | 1h 30m | 342 | 513 |
| 8 | September 29, 2021 18:30 | September 29, 2021 19:45 | 1h 15m | 310 | 379 |
| 9 | October 21, 2021 05:16 | October 24, 2021 03:00 | 2d 21h | 260 | 17K |
| 10 | June 16, 2021 14:15 | June 16, 2021 17:00 | 2h 45m | 142 | 390 |
Outage episodes by size in 2021: 10 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 McPherson 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 Electric Coop, Inc | 2021 | 2.0 hrs | 1.20 | 1.9 hrs | 1.18 |
| FEM Electric Assn, Inc | 2018 | 3.8 hrs | 2.21 | 3.8 hrs | 2.21 |
| Montana-Dakota Utilities 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 79% of South Dakota's customers in 2021; utilities it does not see are not counted.
- Hours per customer = outage customer-minutes ÷ 1,223 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. McPherson County has data for 2017, 2019–2025.
Cite this report
MassOutage (massoutage.com), McPherson 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/); EIA Form 861 (utility reliability) (https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/eia861/). https://massoutage.com/reports/2021/south-dakota/mcpherson-county