Power outages in California, by utility
Across 22 California utilities that reported to the federal government, the median customer went without power for 1.7 hours in 2025 — that is 1.8× better than the national median. California ranks #34 of 41 states for outage time, worst first.
- Median utility
- 1.7 hrs
- typical customer
- Worst utility
- 10.2 hrs
- Liberty Utilities
- Best utility
- 0.2 hrs
- Alameda Municipal Power
- Utilities reporting
- 22
- of 752 nationwide
Every reporting California utility, worst outage time first
| # | Utility | Outage time/yr | Outages/yr | vs US median |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Liberty UtilitiesInvestor Owned | 10.2 hrs614 min | 3.1 | 3.5× worse |
| 2 | Southern California Edison CoInvestor Owned | 9.1 hrs545 min | 1.4 | 3.1× worse |
| 3 | PacifiCorpInvestor Owned | 8.1 hrs485 min | 5.3 | 2.7× worse |
| 4 | Los Angeles Department of Water & PowerMunicipal | 6.8 hrs408 min | 0.8 | 2.3× worse |
| 5 | Bear Valley Electric ServiceInvestor Owned | 5.6 hrs338 min | 5.6 | 1.9× worse |
| 6 | Pacific Gas & Electric Co.Investor Owned | 4.5 hrs273 min | 1.6 | 1.5× worse |
| 7 | City of Pasadena - (CA)Municipal | 3.6 hrs213 min | 0.8 | 1.2× worse |
| 8 | City of Corona - (CA)Municipal | 3 hrs178 min | 1.9 | 1.0× better |
| 9 | City of Burbank Water and Power - (CA)Municipal | 2.9 hrs174 min | 0.8 | 1.0× better |
| 10 | San Diego Gas & Electric CoInvestor Owned | 2.2 hrs130 min | 0.5 | 1.4× better |
| 11 | Imperial Irrigation DistrictPolitical Subdivision | 1.9 hrs114 min | 0.7 | 1.6× better |
| 12 | City of Riverside - (CA)Municipal | 1.5 hrs88 min | 0.5 | 2.0× better |
| 13 | City of Moreno Valley - (CA)Municipal | 1.4 hrs85 min | 0.7 | 2.1× better |
| 14 | City of Shasta Lake - (CA)Municipal | 1.3 hrs80 min | 0.7 | 2.2× better |
| 15 | City of Redding - (CA)Municipal | 1.2 hrs74 min | 0.7 | 2.4× better |
| 16 | City of Lodi - (CA)Municipal | 1.2 hrs72 min | 0.5 | 2.5× better |
| 17 | City of Santa Clara - (CA)Municipal | 1.2 hrs69 min | 0.6 | 2.6× better |
| 18 | City of Palo Alto - (CA)Municipal | 1.1 hrs68 min | 0.6 | 2.6× better |
| 19 | Turlock Irrigation DistrictPolitical Subdivision | 1 hrs62 min | 0.7 | 2.9× better |
| 20 | Modesto Irrigation DistrictPolitical Subdivision | 0.6 hrs36 min | 0.4 | 4.9× better |
| 21 | City of Anaheim - (CA)Municipal | 0.5 hrs32 min | 0.6 | 5.6× better |
| 22 | Alameda Municipal PowerMunicipal | 0.2 hrs9 min | 0.1 | 19.7× better |
Outage time is SAIDI: the average minutes a customer went without power across the year, storms and major events included. Outages/yr is SAIFI. The US median across all reporting utilities is 3 hours (178 minutes).
What these numbers do and do not say
SAIDI counts the minutes an average customer spent without power over the year, including storms and other major events. We rank on the figure that includes them, because excluding storms would describe a year nobody actually lived through.
Utilities report these numbers themselves, and smaller co-ops and municipal systems often serve rural territory where a single line fault affects a large share of customers. A high number is not automatically mismanagement — but it is still the power you did not have.
Utilities that filed no reliability data are left out entirely rather than counted as zero.