Mille Lacs Energy Cooperative, MN
Mille Lacs Energy Cooperative's outage record
Mille Lacs Energy Cooperative customers in Minnesota had 1.4 interruptions last year, 3.5 hours without power in total - above the typical US utility's outage time by about 1.2×. That is 14% more outage time than the Minnesota state average of 3 hours a year.
How long a single Mille Lacs Energy Cooperative outage runs
A typical outage here runs about 2.6 hours - long enough that a battery alone usually will not see you through, but short enough that a fuel-powered portable generator is a reasonable match. Why outage length, not count, picks the backup: how often vs how long.
The generator question for Mille Lacs Energy Cooperative
Serving 16,042 customers here, Mille Lacs Energy Cooperative customers lose more power than most of the country sees, so a generator is worth getting rather than an overreaction.
How Mille Lacs Energy Cooperative's record was measured
Mille Lacs Energy Cooperative filed these numbers itself, as a member-owned cooperative, under EIA Form 861 - a federal reliability report covering its entire Minnesota territory, serving 16,042 customers here, not a single street or outage. See Minnesota as a whole, across every utility that filed: Minnesota's outage record. How the verdict bands are set is in the methodology.