County annual report · FIPS 30027
2023 Fergus County, MT Power Outage Report
In 2023, customers in Fergus County, MT went without power for an average of 1.7 hours, a total of 8,989 customer-hours (Montana average 1.8 hours). That ranks 28th worst of 50 Montana counties and 2415th of 2,977 nationally.
Compared with MT, the US and 2022
Coverage line is EAGLE-I's share of Montana customers tracked each year.
Biggest outages in Fergus County, 2023
The 10 outage episodes with the most customers out at once. Times are UTC.
| # | Started (UTC) | Ended (UTC) | Duration | Peak out | Customer-hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | June 24, 2023 01:45 | June 24, 2023 03:15 | 1h 30m | 1,561 | 2,134 |
| 2 | June 15, 2023 02:15 | June 15, 2023 03:45 | 1h 30m | 1,145 | 1,718 |
| 3 | July 12, 2023 22:15 | July 13, 2023 03:00 | 4h 45m | 709 | 3,368 |
| 4 | April 19, 2023 09:15 | April 20, 2023 23:30 | 1d 14h | 161 | 310 |
| 5 | February 25, 2023 22:30 | February 26, 2023 01:45 | 3h 15m | 159 | 516 |
| 6 | September 17, 2023 13:00 | September 17, 2023 15:15 | 2h 15m | 27 | 48 |
| 7 | January 20, 2023 16:00 | January 20, 2023 19:45 | 3h 45m | 19 | 71 |
| 8 | January 31, 2023 17:15 | January 31, 2023 20:15 | 3h | 19 | 57 |
| 9 | March 30, 2023 15:30 | March 30, 2023 17:45 | 2h 15m | 12 | 27 |
| 10 | July 26, 2023 18:30 | July 26, 2023 22:30 | 4h | 12 | 48 |
Outage episodes by size in 2023: 5 reached 100+ customers, 2 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 Fergus County reported on EIA Form 861 for 2023, 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) | 2023 | 1.7 hrs | 0.93 | 1.7 hrs | 0.93 |
| NorthWestern Energy | - | - | - | - | - |
| Fergus Electric Coop, Inc | - | - | - | - | - |
| Hill County 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 n/a of Montana's customers in 2023; utilities it does not see are not counted.
- Hours per customer = outage customer-minutes ÷ 5,384 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. Fergus County has data for 2019–2025.
Cite this report
MassOutage (massoutage.com), Fergus County, MT annual power outage report, 2023, 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/2023/montana/fergus-county