Power outages in Iowa, by utility
Across 13 Iowa utilities that reported to the federal government, the median customer went without power for 1.6 hours in 2025 — that is 1.9× better than the national median. Iowa ranks #36 of 41 states for outage time, worst first.
- Median utility
- 1.6 hrs
- typical customer
- Worst utility
- 3.4 hrs
- MidAmerican Energy Co
- Best utility
- 0.3 hrs
- City of Independence - (IA)
- Utilities reporting
- 13
- of 752 nationwide
Every reporting Iowa utility, worst outage time first
| # | Utility | Outage time/yr | Outages/yr | vs US median |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | MidAmerican Energy CoInvestor Owned | 3.4 hrs205 min | 1.2 | 1.2× worse |
| 2 | Maquoketa Valley Rrl Elec CoopCooperative | 2.3 hrs138 min | 1.0 | 1.3× better |
| 3 | Corridor Energy CooperativeCooperative | 2.3 hrs135 min | 1.8 | 1.3× better |
| 4 | Heartland Power CoopCooperative | 2 hrs117 min | 0.9 | 1.5× better |
| 5 | MiEnergy CooperativeCooperative | 1.7 hrs101 min | 0.9 | 1.8× better |
| 6 | Butler County Rural Elec Coop - (IA)Cooperative | 1.6 hrs97 min | 1.5 | 1.8× better |
| 7 | Consumers Energy Coop - (IA)Cooperative | 1.6 hrs94 min | 0.7 | 1.9× better |
| 8 | Eastern Iowa Light & Power CoopCooperative | 1.5 hrs92 min | 0.9 | 1.9× better |
| 9 | East-Central Iowa Rural Elec CoopCooperative | 1.1 hrs67 min | 0.9 | 2.7× better |
| 10 | Iowa Lakes Electric CoopCooperative | 0.9 hrs55 min | 0.4 | 3.2× better |
| 11 | City of Ames - (IA)Municipal | 0.4 hrs21 min | 0.4 | 8.4× better |
| 12 | Board of Water Electric & CommunicationsMunicipal | 0.3 hrs19 min | 0.3 | 9.3× better |
| 13 | City of Independence - (IA)Municipal | 0.3 hrs17 min | 0.2 | 10.3× 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.