City of Memphis, TN
How often City of Memphis goes out
City of Memphis customers in Tennessee had 2.2 interruptions last year, 5.8 hours without power in total - above the typical US utility's outage time by about 2×. That is 52% more outage time than the Tennessee state average of 3.8 hours a year.
What a typical outage at City of Memphis looks like
2.6 hours is the average length of a single outage here - past comfortable battery range, which is where a portable generator becomes the better buy. The frequency-versus-duration guide covers why length decides the kind of backup.
Do City of Memphis customers need a generator
Serving 430,114 customers here, City of Memphis customers lose more power than most of the country sees, so a generator is worth getting rather than an overreaction.
Where this number comes from
City of Memphis filed these numbers itself, as a municipally-owned utility, under EIA Form 861 - a federal reliability report covering its entire Tennessee territory, serving 430,114 customers here, not a single street or outage. Every other utility in Tennessee is covered too: see Tennessee's full record. The full scoring method lives in the methodology guide.