PowerOutage.US collects, records, and aggregates live power outage data from utilities all over the United States,
with the goal to create the single most reliable and complete source of power outage information available.
| Customers Tracked: | |
| USA: | 125,795,755 |
| CA: | 4,806,881 |
Most states have many electric utilities, many small, some big, and with these large numbers of companies it can be
hard to get a true overall status of the power grid in a particular area. This project collects information from over
400 Utilities into one place, with more being added all the time. Making this site the most complete source of power
outage information currently available.
Most Utilities put very little resources behind their publicly facing OMSs (Outage Management Systems), they are more
focused on getting their customers reconnected, as they should be. However this means that during big events where lots
of people want to know the status of the power in a particular area, the Utility’s OMS will tend to be overwhelmed if
not completely unresponsive. Meanwhile PowerOutage.us has stood up to huge amounts of traffic without faltering. Allowing
people directly affected by an outage event and onlookers to stay informed and up to date. Making this site one of the
most reliable sources of power outage information available.
In addition, no utility releases detailed historical power outage information, so we store all of the
information we collect. Making this project the only source of detailed historical power outage information. While
this data is not available on the site, you can contact us for more information.
You can view information about our bot here: About/Bot
I started creating this as part of a fascination with watching power outage maps during big storms as a kid and now
as part of my fascination with unique datasets as an adult. I like working on interesting projects and for a while
have wanted to build something big that others could use and find interest in.
Be warned I am working on this Project in my spare time so updates and changes will come slowly.
Outage data will only be as accurate as the Utility reports it. I try to detect and handle if a utility site breaks
and/or reports inaccurate data but in some cases it is essentially impossible to discern the difference. During major
events, I will be monitoring the status of many parts of PowerOutage.us including the data imports and will address
any unhandled issues ASAP.
Many small companies do not report outage information online, in these cases there is nothing I can do to collect this
information. If your utility is one of these then you can help! Call them up, E-mail them, or reach out to them on
social media and let them know you want to have them add a public outage reporting system.
Also, keep in mind I am working on this Project in my spare time so updates and changes will come slowly. If you have
any questions, or see any issues on the site, please do reach out to me!
The Census Bureau, the geometry data for the detailed maps.
MapBox, the code for drawing the detailed maps.
