141 Grid Reliability Statistics (October 2026)

Updated October 2026. Every number on this page links to the agency, regulator, national lab, utility filing or peer-reviewed study that produced it.

The power grid is getting less reliable for the people who depend on it, and the numbers are no longer subtle. Americans now spend more time in the dark than they did a decade ago, outages last longer when they happen, and the organization responsible for grid reliability in North America has put more than half of its regions on a risk watch for the next five years.

At the same time, demand is climbing faster than at any point this century, driven by data centers, electrification and extreme weather that pushes heating and cooling loads to new peaks. The equipment that carries that power is old, and the replacements take years to arrive.

We pulled 141 statistics from primary sources only: the U.S. Energy Information Administration, NERC, the Department of Energy, national laboratories, the Census Bureau, the Oregon Public Utility Commission and utility filings. If you are a journalist, researcher or homeowner trying to understand what grid reliability actually looks like in 2026, start here.

Key Takeaways

• The average U.S. electricity customer went 11 hours without power in 2024, nearly twice the annual average of the decade before (EIA, Dec 2025).
• About 1 in 4 U.S. households, roughly 33.9 million, lost power completely at least once in a 12-month period (U.S. Census Bureau, Oct 2024).
• 80% of major U.S. power outages from 2000 to 2023 were caused by weather (Climate Central, Apr 2024).
• Major power outages cost U.S. homes and businesses $121 billion in 2024 (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Mar 2026).
• 13 of 23 North American grid regions face resource adequacy challenges over the next 10 years (NERC, Jan 2026).
• Data centers could use 6.7% to 12% of all U.S. electricity by 2028 (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Dec 2024).
• About 55% of the distribution transformers in service in the U.S. are older than 33 years (U.S. Department of Energy, Nov 2024).
• Utilities are waiting up to 2 years for new distribution transformers, four times longer than before 2022 (NREL, Feb 2024).
• About 400,000 Portland General Electric customers lost power in the January 2024 ice storm, with more than 160,000 out at the peak (Portland General Electric, Apr 2024).
• Data centers make up about 15% of investor-owned utility load in Oregon today, a share expected to reach 25% by 2030 (Oregon PUC, Sep 2026).
• Home standby generators are installed in only about 6.75% of the U.S. homes Generac considers its addressable market (Generac 10-K, Feb 2026).
• 17.66 million of 123.53 million U.S. homes had a backup generator in 2020 (EIA, Mar 2023).
• 37% of new U.S. residential solar systems installed in 2025 came with a battery, up from 25% in 2024 (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Aug 2026).

How Reliable Is the U.S. Power Grid?

Day to day, the grid is about as reliable as it has ever been. The problem is the bad days: major storms now account for most of the time Americans spend without power, and those days are getting longer and more frequent.

How long do Americans go without power each year?

Most outage time now comes from a handful of major events rather than everyday faults. Routine interruptions have barely moved in a decade.

• Major events such as Hurricanes Beryl, Helene and Milton accounted for 80% of the hours U.S. customers spent without power in 2024 (EIA, Dec 2025).
• Interruptions caused by major events averaged nearly nine hours per customer in 2024, compared with nearly four hours per year from 2014 to 2023, while outages not tied to major events routinely average about two hours a year (EIA, Dec 2025).
• In 2024 the average U.S. power interruption took 432.7 minutes, about 7.2 hours, to restore when major event days are counted, up from 188 minutes in 2014 (EIA Electric Power Annual, Oct 2025).
• From 2018 to 2020, U.S. counties covering 73.7% of the population averaged 520 million customer-hours without power each year (Nature Communications, Apr 2023).
• Those counties saw 17,484 outages lasting 8 hours or more, a medically relevant duration, and 231,174 lasting at least an hour between 2018 and 2020 (Nature Communications, Apr 2023).

Which states have the most and least reliable power?

Reliability depends heavily on where you live. Hurricane exposure and island grids dominate the bottom of the rankings.

• South Carolina customers had the longest interruptions of any state in 2024, at nearly 53 hours (EIA, Dec 2025).
• Customers in Arizona, South Dakota, North Dakota and Massachusetts averaged less than two hours of interruptions in 2024 (EIA, Dec 2025).
• The average U.S. customer experienced 1.5 power interruptions in 2024, and Hawaii had the most of any state at 4.4 (EIA, Dec 2025).

What were the biggest recent blackouts?

The largest events knock out millions of customers at once, and some last for days.

• Hurricane Helene left 5.9 million customers without power across 10 states in September 2024, including at least 1.2 million in South Carolina (EIA, Dec 2025).
• Hurricane Milton left 3.4 million Florida customers without power in October 2024 (EIA, Dec 2025).
• Hurricane Helene caused about 431 transmission element outages, the most ever recorded for a single event (NERC, Jun 2025).
• On November 13, 2025, a system disturbance in the northeast Western Interconnection triggered cascading outages that affected about 250,000 customers for up to nine hours (NERC, Jun 2026).
• More than 4.5 million people in Texas lost power during the February 2021 freeze, some for as long as four days (FERC and NERC, Nov 2021).
• The February 2021 event required 23,418 MW of manual firm load shed, the largest controlled firm load shed event in U.S. history (FERC and NERC, Nov 2021).
• At least 210 people died during the February 2021 event, most of the deaths connected to the power outages (FERC and NERC, Nov 2021).

What Causes Power Outages?

Weather is the story, and it is getting worse. Equipment failures and physical attacks matter, but they are a rounding error next to wind, ice and heat.

What kinds of weather cause the most outages?

Wind, rain and thunderstorms cause more large outages than any other weather type. Winter storms rank second.

• Severe weather such as high winds, rain and thunderstorms caused 58% of weather-related major outages, 1,011 events, from 2000 to 2023 (Climate Central, Apr 2024).
• Snow, ice and freezing rain accounted for 23% of weather-related major outages, 398 events, over the same period (Climate Central, Apr 2024).
• Tropical cyclones, including hurricanes, caused 14% of weather-related major outages, 249 events (Climate Central, Apr 2024).
• Extreme heat caused 48 major outages from 2000 to 2023, about 3% of weather-related outages (Climate Central, Apr 2024).
• Wildfire accounted for 39 major outages, about 2% of weather-related outages, and about one-third of those were utility public safety power shutoffs (Climate Central, Apr 2024).
• In 2024, 27 weather events in the United States caused losses exceeding $1 billion within the bulk power system footprint (NERC, Jun 2025).

Are weather-related outages increasing?

Yes. Large weather-driven outages roughly doubled between the 2000s and the last decade, and long outages cluster on days with stacked extreme events.

• The U.S. had about twice as many weather-related major outages in 2014 to 2023 as in 2000 to 2009 (Climate Central, Apr 2024).
• Texas reported the most weather-related major outages from 2000 to 2023 (210), followed by Michigan (157), California (145), North Carolina (111) and Ohio (88) (Climate Central, Apr 2024).
• 62.1% of U.S. outages lasting 8 hours or more from 2018 to 2020 co-occurred with extreme weather or climate events, particularly heavy precipitation, anomalous heat and tropical cyclones (Nature Communications, Apr 2023).
• Outages of 8 hours or more were 3.4 times more common on days with a single extreme weather event and 10 times more common on days with multiple events (Nature Communications, Apr 2023).

Do power plants fail during extreme weather?

They do, and more often than they used to. Cold snaps expose plants that were never winterized for the temperatures they now face.

• During the February 2021 freeze, 81% of generating unit outages, derates or failures to start happened at temperatures above the unit’s stated ambient design temperature (FERC and NERC, Nov 2021).
• Conventional power plants’ weighted equivalent forced outage rate rose to 9.2% in 2025, above historical norms of 7% to 8% (NERC, Jun 2026).

How common are physical and cyber attacks on the grid?

Physical incidents are frequent but rarely cause outages, and confirmed cyber-caused outages on the bulk grid remain at zero.

• More than 3,500 physical security incidents were shared with the E-ISAC in 2025, and 3% of them caused operational disruptions (NERC E-ISAC, Feb 2026).
• The E-ISAC has tracked more than 17,000 physical security incidents since 2021, including assault, ballistic damage, intrusion and theft (NERC, Jun 2026).
• There were 75 physical-security-related transmission outages at 100 kV and above from 2021 to 2025, lasting an average of 92 hours (NERC, Jun 2026).
• In 2024, 220 physical security incidents were reported to DOE in the Western Interconnection, more than double the 107 reported in 2023, though WECC attributes much of the rise to one entity reporting many minor incidents (WECC, May 2025).
• Four cybersecurity intrusions were reported through DOE Form OE-417 in the Western Interconnection in 2024 (WECC, May 2025).
• No outages due to cybersecurity were reported on bulk electric system equipment in 2024, and there were no physical-security outages on conventional generation (NERC, Jun 2025).

Can Electricity Supply Keep Up With Demand?

For the first time in a generation, the honest answer is “not everywhere.” Demand forecasts have exploded in just a few years while dependable generation retires faster than it is replaced.

Which regions face the highest blackout risk?

NERC has moved five large regions into its highest risk category within the next five years, and retirements keep stacking up.

• NERC rates five areas as reaching High Risk within five years: MISO from 2028, and PJM, Texas RE-ERCOT, WECC-Basin and WECC-Northwest from 2029 (NERC, Jan 2026).
• Confirmed and announced generator retirements over the next 10 years total more than 105 GW of peak seasonal capacity (NERC, Jan 2026).
• DOE’s July 2025 Resource Adequacy Report found that, in its plant closures scenario, retirements plus load growth raise the risk of power outages 100-fold by 2030 (U.S. Department of Energy, Jul 2025).
• DOE counts 104 GW of firm generating capacity set for retirement by 2030 (U.S. Department of Energy, Jul 2025).
• Of the 209 GW of new generation DOE expects by 2030, only 22 GW would come from firm baseload sources (U.S. Department of Energy, Jul 2025).

How fast is electricity demand growing?

Faster than at any time since 2000. Forecasts that looked aggressive three years ago now look conservative.

• Aggregated summer peak demand across NERC assessment areas is forecast to rise by more than 224 GW over 10 years, 69% higher than the prior year’s 132 GW growth projection (NERC, Jan 2026).
• Winter peak demand across NERC assessment areas is expected to grow by 245 GW over the next 10 years (NERC, Jan 2026).
• Aggregated peak demand across all NERC assessment areas rose by more than 11 GW from summer 2025 to summer 2026, beating the prior year’s 10 GW rise (NERC, May 2026).
• Going into winter 2025 to 2026, aggregate peak demand across NERC areas was up 20 GW, or 2.5%, from the previous winter, while total resources grew by only 9.4 GW (NERC, Nov 2025).
• EIA expects U.S. electricity use to grow 1% in 2026 and 3% in 2027, the first four straight years of growth since 2007 and the strongest four-year stretch since 2000 (EIA, Jan 2026).
• EIA expects U.S. electricity generation to grow 2.2% to a record 4,368 billion kWh in 2026 (EIA, Sep 2026).
• U.S. electricity consumption in the third quarter of 2026 was 4% higher than a year earlier, led by the residential (6%) and commercial (5%) sectors (EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook, Oct 2026).
• Utilities’ five-year forecast of peak load growth reached 166 GW in 2025, more than six times the 24 GW forecast three years earlier (Grid Strategies, Nov 2025).

How much power do data centers use?

Data centers are the single biggest driver of new demand, and their share of national electricity use is set to multiply.

• U.S. data centers used 176 TWh in 2023, or 4.4% of total U.S. electricity consumption (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Dec 2024).
• LBNL’s 2028 data center projection works out to 74 to 132 GW of total power demand (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Dec 2024).
• Data centers account for roughly 90 GW, about 55%, of the 166 GW of forecast five-year peak load growth (Grid Strategies, Nov 2025).

Is the Grid’s Equipment Aging?

Much of the grid was built for a different century, and replacing it has become a supply-chain problem as much as a funding problem. A utility can know exactly which transformer needs replacing and still wait years for a new one.

How old is the U.S. power grid?

Most of the backbone equipment is at or near the end of its design life.

• DOE reported that 70% of U.S. transmission lines and 70% of power transformers are 25 years or older (U.S. Department of Energy, Quadrennial Technology Review, Sep 2015).
• 60% of U.S. circuit breakers are 30 years or older (U.S. Department of Energy, Quadrennial Technology Review, Sep 2015).
• The average large power transformer installed in the U.S. is about 40 years old, roughly its full intended service life (U.S. Department of Energy, Jul 2024).
• NREL estimates the U.S. has 60 to 80 million distribution transformers in service, with more than 3 TW of installed capacity (NREL, Feb 2024).
• ASCE gave U.S. energy infrastructure a D+ in its 2025 Report Card (ASCE, Mar 2025).
• ASCE projects a $578 billion investment gap in the U.S. energy sector by 2033, even if federal infrastructure funding is reauthorized (ASCE, Mar 2025).

Is there a transformer shortage?

Yes. Prices and lead times have both multiplied since 2022, and the U.S. still imports most of its largest units.

• Distribution transformer prices rose by as much as 4 to 9 times over three years (NREL, Feb 2024).
• The distribution transformer capacity needed by 2050 could be 160% to 260% higher than in 2021 (NREL, Feb 2024).
• Lead times for large power transformers are commonly quoted at 36 months and can reach 60 months (U.S. Department of Energy, Jul 2024).
• In 2019, 82% of the large power transformers installed in the U.S. were imported, and only 18% were made domestically (U.S. Department of Energy, Jul 2024).
• U.S. transformer manufacturers reported demand jumping by as much as 70% year over year (U.S. Department of Energy, Jul 2024).

Is the U.S. building enough transmission?

Not even close to its own past pace, though the pipeline is finally growing.

• The U.S. built 888 miles of new 345 kV and above transmission in 2024, using revised FERC data, compared with nearly 4,000 miles in 2013 (Grid Strategies and ACEG, Jul 2025).
• The U.S. averaged 536 new miles of high-voltage transmission per year in 2020 to 2024, down from 1,781 miles per year in 2010 to 2014 (Grid Strategies and ACEG, Jul 2025).
• About 41,000 miles of transmission above 100 kV is under construction or in development for the next 10 years, up from a 28,275-mile projection the year before (NERC, Jan 2026).

How long does new power generation take to connect?

Longer every year. Most proposed projects never get built at all.

• About 2,061 GW of generation and storage capacity was waiting in U.S. interconnection queues at the end of 2025 (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Queued Up, Jun 2026).
• That queued capacity is far larger than the entire installed U.S. power plant fleet of 1,374 GW (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Queued Up, Jun 2026).
• The median project built in 2025 took 61 months from interconnection request to commercial operation, up from 36 months in 2015 and 22 months in 2008 (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Queued Up, Jun 2026).
• Only about 19% of projects, 13% of capacity, that requested interconnection from 2000 to 2020 reached commercial operation by the end of 2025 (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Queued Up, Jun 2026).

How much are utilities spending to fix it?

More than ever, which is also why rates keep rising.

• Major utilities’ spending on transmission nearly tripled from 2003 to 2023, reaching $27.7 billion (EIA, Nov 2024).
• Utility capital investment in distribution rose $31.4 billion, or 160%, from 2003 to 2023, reaching $50.9 billion in 2023 (EIA, Nov 2024).
• Utility capital investment in line transformers rose 23% in one year, to $7.5 billion in 2023, because of supply chain and manufacturing issues (EIA, Nov 2024).

How Reliable Is Power in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest?

The Pacific Northwest built its reputation on cheap, steady hydropower, but the region’s grid is now under pressure from both sides: ice storms and wildfire risk on the delivery end, and data-center growth on the supply end. Portland-area homeowners have lived through three major storm outages in five years.

How bad was the January 2024 Oregon ice storm?

It was one of the most damaging storms in PGE’s history, and for tens of thousands of households the outage lasted days, not hours.

• About 103,000 PGE customers lost power more than once during the January 2024 storm (Portland General Electric, Apr 2024).
• 34,671 PGE customers were affected by outages lasting more than 3 days, and another 44,194 by outages of 2 to 3 days (Portland General Electric, Apr 2024).
• PGE had restored power to 98.0% of affected customers by the evening of January 20, 2024, a week after the storm began (Portland General Electric, Apr 2024).
• Pacific Power logged 162,495 customer interruptions in Oregon during the same January 13 to 19, 2024 storm, with an average outage lasting 710 minutes (Pacific Power, May 2025).

How often do Portland-area storms knock out power?

Major storms are now a near-annual event in the Portland metro and Clark County.

• The February 2021 ice storm caused more than 750,000 outages on PGE’s system, with many customers losing power more than once (Portland General Electric 10-K, Feb 2022).
• A December 2025 storm caused the largest outage in Clark Public Utilities’ history, cutting power to about 110,000 electric connections, nearly half its customers, in a single day (Clark Public Utilities, Jun 2026).
• Pacific Power’s December 16 to 19, 2025 winter storm interrupted 104,967 Oregon customers (Pacific Power, Apr 2026).
• During the June 2021 heat dome, PGE set an all-time system peak of 4,447 MW, more than 9% above the previous record from December 1998 (Portland General Electric 10-K, Feb 2022).

How reliable are Oregon’s utilities year to year?

Reliability swings with the weather. A calm year looks fine on paper, and a storm year can multiply outage time several times over.

• Including major events, PGE customers averaged 12.87 hours without power in 2024, the highest of Oregon’s three investor-owned utilities (Oregon PUC, Aug 2025).
• PGE’s worst recent year was 2021, when its average customer was without power for 45.4 hours including major events (Oregon PUC, Aug 2025).
• PGE’s average customer was without power for 273 minutes in 2025 including major storms and 103 minutes excluding them, down from 772 minutes including storms in 2024 (Portland General Electric, Apr 2026).
• Including all events, Pacific Power’s Oregon customers averaged 458.8 minutes without power and 2.39 interruptions in 2025 (Pacific Power, Apr 2026).

How does wildfire risk affect power in Oregon?

Wildfire prevention now causes outages of its own, and homes in fire-risk zones are already arming themselves with backup power.

• Wildfire-driven Enhanced Safety Settings caused 561,058 customer interruptions on Pacific Power’s Oregon system in 2025, adding 73.2 minutes to average outage time (Pacific Power, Apr 2026).
• PGE counted 25,527 customer meters across its 12 High Fire Risk Zones in 2025, up 11% from 23,060 in 2024 after a new zone was added in the Chehalem Mountains (Portland General Electric, Dec 2024).
• 68% of PGE customers in High Fire Risk Zones report having a backup generator, though PGE notes a transfer switch is needed to run hard-wired loads such as well pumps (Portland General Electric, Dec 2024).

If you are one of those generator owners without a transfer switch, the generator will not run your well pump, furnace or other hard-wired circuits during an outage. A professionally installed standby system with an automatic transfer switch closes that gap.

Will the Pacific Northwest have enough power?

Regional planners and NERC agree the margin is shrinking fast, and the Northwest moves into NERC’s high-risk category before the end of the decade.

• Peak load in NERC’s WECC-Northwest area, which includes Oregon, is forecast to grow 6.6 GW, or 19%, over 10 years, driven by data centers (NERC, Jan 2026).
• NERC’s modeling shows 8,080 MWh of expected unserved energy in the Northwest in 2029 (NERC, Jan 2026).
• NERC’s forecast for WECC-Northwest includes 7,652 MW of large-load additions through 2035, with average annual demand growth of 2.7% (NERC, Jan 2026).
• NERC flagged WECC-Northwest as an elevated-risk area for summer 2026: its anticipated reserve margin fell from 32% to 27% amid drought, in a region where hydropower makes up 55% of the generation mix (NERC, May 2026).
• WECC-Northwest’s winter 2025 to 2026 peak demand was forecast to be 2.9 GW, or 9.3%, higher than the prior winter, and NERC listed the area among those at risk of shortfalls in extreme cold (NERC, Nov 2025).
• The Northwest Power and Conservation Council forecasts regional electricity demand rising from about 22,000 aMW today to 31,000 to 44,000 aMW by 2046 (Northwest Power and Conservation Council, May 2025).
• The Northwest grid hit a winter peak of about 35,500 MW in February 2025 (Northwest Power and Conservation Council, May 2025).
• Across its low and high trajectories, the Council expects the Northwest power system to grow 50% to 100% over the next 20 years (Northwest Power and Conservation Council, Aug 2026).
• To meet demand by 2032, the draft Ninth Power Plan says the Northwest needs more than 11,000 MW of new generation and more than 5,000 MW of storage (Northwest Power and Conservation Council, Aug 2026).
• In the Council’s 2029 adequacy assessment, a higher data-center scenario with 4,000 aMW of tech load failed every adequacy metric (Northwest Power and Conservation Council, Aug 2024).

How much are data centers changing Oregon’s grid?

Oregon is one of the country’s data-center hubs, and the load growth is already visible in utility sales.

• PGE’s industrial electricity deliveries rose 14.1% in 2025 as new data centers came online (Portland General Electric 10-K, Feb 2026).
• Oregon commercial and industrial electricity sales grew 39% from 2014 to 2024, while residential sales grew 6% (Oregon Department of Energy, May 2026).
• Oregon Department of Energy modeling shows the state’s electricity loads doubling by 2050, with data centers the biggest near-term driver (Oregon Department of Energy, Nov 2025).

What Do Power Outages Cost?

An outage is not just an inconvenience. It is spoiled food, lost wages, shuttered businesses and, in the worst storms, lives, and the most recent national estimate is far higher than the figure most people still quote.

How much do power outages cost the U.S. economy?

Tens of billions of dollars every year, and the newest estimates are the highest yet.

• The average yearly cost of major outages to U.S. customers topped $67 billion between 2018 and 2024 (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Mar 2026).
• The number of major U.S. outages rose 29% between 2018 and 2024, from 4,666 to 6,533 (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Mar 2026).
• The average major outage lengthened from 9.6 hours in 2018 to 11.8 hours in 2024 (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Mar 2026).
• Sustained power interruptions longer than 5 minutes cost U.S. electricity customers an estimated $44 billion per year in 2015 dollars, 25% more than LBNL’s 2006 estimate (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Jun 2018).
• Weather-related power outages cost the U.S. economy an inflation-adjusted average of $18 billion to $33 billion per year between 2003 and 2012 (Executive Office of the President and DOE, Aug 2013).
• Weather-related outage costs are estimated at $40 billion to $75 billion in 2008, the year of Hurricane Ike, and $27 billion to $52 billion in 2012, the year of Superstorm Sandy (Executive Office of the President and DOE, Aug 2013).

Who pays the cost of outages?

Businesses absorb most of the dollar losses, but households absorb the disruption.

• Commercial customers bear 70% of the U.S. cost of sustained power interruptions, and industrial customers 27% (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Jun 2018).
• Residential customers make up 90% of all U.S. electricity customers but account for only 3% of the total estimated cost of sustained interruptions, because per-customer costs are low (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Jun 2018).
• About 70% of U.S. households that reported an outage, 23.6 million, said at least one outage lasted 6 hours or more (U.S. Census Bureau, Oct 2024).
• Of an estimated 4,360,618 U.S. adults displaced by a natural disaster in the past year, 1,834,248 said they were still experiencing loss of electricity “a lot” one month after the disaster (U.S. Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey, Sep 2024).
• During an outage, a closed refrigerator keeps food cold for about four hours and a full freezer holds its temperature for about 48 hours (Ready.gov, Jun 2026).

Are power outages a health risk?

Yes, especially for people who rely on powered medical equipment and anyone exposed to cold, heat or carbon monoxide.

• Around 14.5 million U.S. households have medical devices that require electricity, and 31.6% of them were affected by power outages (U.S. Census Bureau, Oct 2024).
• During the August 2003 New York City blackout, accidental deaths rose 122% and non-accidental deaths rose 25%, resulting in approximately 90 excess deaths (Epidemiology, Mar 2012).
• Texas DSHS confirmed 246 deaths as related to the February 2021 winter storm, across 77 Texas counties (Texas Department of State Health Services, Dec 2021).

Are portable generators dangerous during outages?

Used improperly, they are one of the leading causes of outage-related deaths. Most fatal cases involve a generator running in or too close to a home.

• Nineteen of Texas’s February 2021 winter storm deaths, 7.7%, were carbon monoxide poisonings from improper use of generators, grills, heaters and vehicles as people lost electricity and heat (Texas Department of State Health Services, Dec 2021).
• CPSC staff identified 789 non-fire carbon monoxide deaths associated with generators in 616 incidents from 2012 to 2022 (U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, Jul 2023).
• Power outages were the top reason for generator use in fatal carbon monoxide incidents, with 103 incidents and 139 deaths from 2012 to 2022, mostly during ice and snow storms and hurricanes (U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, Jul 2023).
• After Hurricane Ike in Texas in September 2008, generators were the source of carbon monoxide exposure in 82% of storm-related cases reported to poison centers (CDC MMWR, Aug 2009).

How Many Homes Have Backup Power?

Backup power is still the exception, not the rule, even as outages get longer. That gap between rising risk and low adoption is the clearest takeaway in this entire data set.

How many U.S. homes have a backup generator?

A minority of homes, concentrated among owner-occupied single-family houses.

• Single-family detached homes account for 13.93 million of the 17.66 million U.S. homes with a backup generator (EIA, Mar 2023).
• 14.81 million owner-occupied U.S. homes had a backup generator in 2020, compared with 2.85 million rented homes (EIA, Mar 2023).
• In the Pacific census division, which includes Oregon, 2.03 million of 18.51 million homes had a backup generator in 2020 (EIA, Mar 2023).
• 22.72 million U.S. homes experienced a power outage lasting more than 24 hours in 2020, 19.00 million of them caused by a natural disaster or weather event (EIA, Mar 2023).

Is home standby generator adoption growing?

Slowly but steadily. Adoption tends to jump after major outage years and cool off in calm ones.

• A year earlier, Generac put home standby penetration at about 6.5% of the same addressable market (Generac 10-K, Feb 2025).
• In its FY2021 filing, Generac estimated home standby penetration at about 5.5%, using a narrower market definition of homes worth over $125,000 (Generac 10-K, Feb 2022).
• Generac’s residential product sales were $2.27 billion in 2025, down 6.8% from $2.43 billion in 2024, which the company attributes mainly to a significantly lower power-outage environment (Generac 10-K, Feb 2026).
• Accounting for customers who install backup generators to ride through outages lowers LBNL’s estimated U.S. cost of sustained interruptions by 18% (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Jun 2018).

If you are weighing a home standby generator, getting it sized and permitted before storm season beats joining the post-outage rush.

Are home batteries replacing generators?

They are growing fast, and they work best alongside other backup rather than as a full replacement for whole-home loads.

• The median residential battery paired with solar in 2025 was 13.5 kWh, the size of a single Tesla Powerwall (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Aug 2026).
• Solar plus 10 kWh of battery storage can meet a limited set of critical loads in most U.S. counties in any month, but covers only 86% of critical load on average when heating and cooling are treated as critical (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Applied Energy, Jul 2023).
• In 2021, U.S. utilities reported 1,094 MW of small-scale battery capacity tied to customer solar systems, 740 MW of it in the residential sector (EIA, Aug 2023).
• Tesla deployed 46.7 GWh of energy storage products in 2025, counting Powerwall and Megapack combined worldwide (Tesla 10-K, Jan 2026).

For Portland-area homes that need to keep heat, a well pump and refrigeration running through a multi-day ice storm, a battery such as the Tesla Powerwall 3 or FranklinWH paired with a standby generator covers both short blips and long outages. Talk to Oregon Generators about which setup fits your home.

Glossary

• aMW (average megawatt): a unit used by Northwest planners for energy delivered continuously over a year; 1 aMW is about 8,760 MWh.
• CAIDI: Customer Average Interruption Duration Index, the average time it takes to restore power after an outage.
• E-ISAC: the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center, run by NERC, which collects security incident reports from utilities.
• GW, MW, TWh: gigawatt and megawatt measure power capacity; terawatt-hour measures energy used over time.
• High Fire Risk Zone (HFRZ): an area a utility has designated as having elevated wildfire risk, where it may shut off or limit power during dangerous conditions.
• Interconnection queue: the waiting list of proposed power plants and storage projects seeking permission to connect to the grid.
• LTRA: NERC’s Long-Term Reliability Assessment, its annual 10-year outlook on whether supply can meet demand.
• Major event: a day when outages exceed a statistical threshold, typically a large storm, which utilities report separately from routine outages.
• NERC: the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, the regulator-backed body responsible for grid reliability in the U.S., Canada and part of Mexico.
• OE-417: the U.S. Department of Energy form utilities use to report electric emergencies and disturbances.
• PSPS: Public Safety Power Shutoff, a deliberate outage a utility uses to prevent its lines from starting wildfires.
• SAIDI: System Average Interruption Duration Index, the total time the average customer is without power in a year.
• SAIFI: System Average Interruption Frequency Index, how many outages the average customer has in a year.
• WECC: the Western Electricity Coordinating Council, which oversees reliability for the Western Interconnection, including Oregon and Washington.

Methodology and Sources

Every statistic on this page was traced to the organization that produced the data: federal agencies, state regulators, NERC and its regional entities, national laboratories, peer-reviewed journals, SEC filings and utility filings with the Oregon Public Utility Commission. We did not cite statistics roundups, news coverage or vendor blogs. Each source was opened and the figure confirmed on the page or in the document before it was included. Where sources disagree, such as the number of customers affected by the January 2024 ice storm, we used the utility’s final regulatory filing rather than early press figures. Forecasts and modeled scenarios are labeled as such. This page is reviewed and refreshed monthly as new reliability data is published.

Sources

• U.S. Energy Information Administration: Hurricanes in 2024 led to the most hours without power in the United States in 10 years; Electric Power Annual, Table 11.1; Grid infrastructure investments drive increase in utility spending over last two decades; Press release, January 2026 STEO; Press release, September 2026 STEO; Short-Term Energy Outlook, Electricity; RECS 2020 Table HC2.1; RECS 2020 Table HC2.2; RECS 2020 Table HC2.8; Energy storage for electricity generation
• NERC: 2025 Long-Term Reliability Assessment; 2026 Summer Reliability Assessment; 2025-2026 Winter Reliability Assessment; State of Reliability 2025 Overview; State of Reliability 2026 Overview; State of Reliability 2026 Technical Assessment; E-ISAC 2025 End-of-Year Report
• FERC and NERC: February 2021 Cold Weather Outages in Texas and the South Central United States
• WECC: State of the Interconnection 2025, Security
• U.S. Department of Energy: Resource Adequacy Report, July 2025;