West River Electric Assn Inc, SD
How often West River Electric Assn Inc goes out
West River Electric Assn Inc customers in South Dakota rarely lose power at all: 0.3 interruptions last year, adding up to just 24 minutes without electricity over the whole year. That is 91% less outage time than the South Dakota state average of 4.5 hours a year.
Outage length, and what it means for a generator
A single outage here averages 80 minutes. That is squarely in battery-power-station range; a fuel generator is overkill for most of these. Why outage length, not count, picks the backup: how often vs how long.
What this means for buying a generator
Serving 21,246 customers here, With a record this steady, West River Electric Assn Inc customers rarely have a reason to shop for a backup generator at all.
The source behind this number
These figures come from EIA Form 861, the reliability report a member-owned cooperative like West River Electric Assn Inc files with federal regulators every year - serving 21,246 customers hereaveraged across the whole territory, not any one address or storm. Every other utility in South Dakota is covered too: see South Dakota's full record. One big storm can move a single year a lot; major event days explains how.