Power outages are rare and brief in Utah
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⛈ It was a dark and stormy night! In the flickering shadows of distant lightning, branches whipped in the wind, scraping against utility lines until finally…
- Nothing happened because Utah almost never has power outages.
Driving the news: Utah consistently has one of the nation's lowest average hours of power outages, according to data from the U.S. Department of Energy.
- That is except for 2020 — when we got hit by an earthquake and hurricane-force winds.
By the numbers: Utahns experienced 1.93 hours of blackout in 2021, the latest available year of data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
- That's the 7th lowest of any state.
- Utahns typically go 2 to 3 hours without power each year, while national averages rose from 3.6 hours in 2013 to 7.33 hours in 2021.
- We've been among the bottom 10 states for power outages almost every year since 2017.
Yes, but: The exception of course was 2020, when Utahns averaged 9.59 hours without electricity.
- It wasn't even fun, thanks to the pandemic.
Seriously, though: Power outages can be deadly for those who depend on medical equipment, or those who lose heating or air conditioning during periods of extreme temperatures, Alex Fitzpatrick and Kavya Beheraj report.
- We don't want to be like Texas in winter.
What we're watching: 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.
- 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.
