County annual report · FIPS 30089
2023 Sanders County, MT Power Outage Report
In 2023, customers in Sanders County, MT went without power for an average of 3.2 hours, a total of 23K customer-hours (Montana average 1.8 hours). That ranks 17th worst of 50 Montana counties and 1901st 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 Sanders 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 8, 2023 18:00 | June 9, 2023 04:15 | 10h 15m | 1,203 | 1,981 |
| 2 | May 2, 2023 03:00 | May 2, 2023 05:45 | 2h 45m | 769 | 1,980 |
| 3 | July 9, 2023 22:00 | July 10, 2023 03:15 | 5h 15m | 552 | 1,392 |
| 4 | February 20, 2023 19:45 | February 20, 2023 22:00 | 2h 15m | 523 | 1,046 |
| 5 | August 29, 2023 23:00 | August 30, 2023 09:30 | 10h 30m | 476 | 985 |
| 6 | May 5, 2023 21:30 | May 6, 2023 04:15 | 6h 45m | 453 | 853 |
| 7 | December 5, 2023 22:00 | December 6, 2023 02:15 | 4h 15m | 364 | 738 |
| 8 | August 9, 2023 22:15 | August 10, 2023 04:15 | 6h | 360 | 1,981 |
| 9 | October 17, 2023 08:45 | October 17, 2023 12:30 | 3h 45m | 251 | 771 |
| 10 | September 18, 2023 17:30 | September 18, 2023 20:30 | 3h | 250 | 217 |
Outage episodes by size in 2023: 21 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 Sanders 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 |
| Avista Corp | 2023 | 2.5 hrs | 0.90 | 2.1 hrs | 0.83 |
| Flathead Electric Coop Inc | 2023 | 2.7 hrs | 1.62 | 2.7 hrs | 1.62 |
| NorthWestern Energy | - | - | - | - | - |
| Northern Lights, Inc | - | - | - | - | - |
| USBIA-Mission Valley Power | - | - | - | - | - |
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 ÷ 7,314 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. Sanders County has data for 2015–2025.
Cite this report
MassOutage (massoutage.com), Sanders 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/sanders-county