The annual average of 11 hours of electricity interruptions was nearly double the annual average of the last ten years, with hurricanes a leading cause.
The report appears to build on a growing body of evidence that extreme weather is taking a heavier toll on the electric power system in parts of the country. In October, JD Power released a report that found the average length of the longest outages are getting longer and concluded that disasters have become a “fact of life” for many utility customers.
Helene, in particular, caused severe damage to utility systems in the U.S. Southeast and Mid-Atlantic.
Duke Energy said after the hurricane that transmission infrastructure in upstate South Carolina “was severely damaged and, in many cases, destroyed” and would need to be entirely rebuilt.
Three days after the hurricane struck, 900,000 Duke customers remained without power across North Carolina and South Carolina, the utility said. Following hurricanes Helene and Milton, Duke reported needing to replace around 16,000 transformers — more transformers than utilities generally require in an entire year, WoodMac Senior Analyst Ben Boucher said in February.
South Carolina, along with North Carolina and Florida, “dealt with strong winds and flooding from Hurricane Helene that affected transmission and distribution power lines as well as substations leading to prolonged power outages,” EIA said. The following month, Hurricane Milton “left 3.4 million customers in Florida without power,” it added.
“In contrast, customers in states such as Arizona, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Massachusetts experienced, on average, less than two hours of service interruptions in 2024,” EIA said