Arizonans experience fewer power outages than most Americans
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If you want to make sure the lights — not to mention your air conditioning — stay on, Arizona is the place to be.
The average Arizona electricity customer experienced 1.77 hours of power outages in 2021 — lower than all but five other states and the District of Columbia, according to recent data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, an agency within the Department of Energy, Alex Fitzpatrick and Kavya Beheraj report.
- Context: Even that number is high compared with 2020, when the average Arizonan experienced 1.2 hours of power outages, the lowest of any state and second nationally only to Washington, D.C.
Why it matters: Electricity outages stand to become more common as extreme weather events — many driven by climate change — wreak havoc on the country's aging power infrastructure.
- While some outages are short-lived annoyances, others are widespread disruptions. Either can become deadly for those who depend on medical equipment, or those who lose heating or air conditioning during periods of extreme temperatures.
- In Arizona, we just experienced a summer of record-breaking heat, setting a new mark with 31 days of high temperatures of 110° or more.
- Consistent electricity, and the air conditioning it powers, can be a matter of life and death — Maricopa County has had nearly 300 deaths this year linked to the heat.
Zoom in: As many as half of Phoenix residents — about 800,000 people — could require medical attention in the event of a multi-day blackout during a heat wave, a recent study concluded.
- Yes, but: The likelihood of a multi-day power outage across all of Phoenix is low, and that figure represents the worst-case scenario.
- ASU researchers have simulated thousands of disaster scenarios and the worst outcome has been one-sixth of our grid going down at once.
The big picture: The average U.S. electricity customer experienced 7.3 hours of power outages in 2021 — down from 8.2 hours in 2020 but more than double 2013's rate.
- The nationwide average of outage-hours has been trending upward over the last several years, beginning with a notable spike in 2017 driven in part by outages following Hurricane Irma.