Power outages in Montana, by utility
Across 6 Montana utilities that reported to the federal government, the median customer went without power for 7.5 hours in 2025 — that is 2.5× the national median. Montana ranks #2 of 41 states for outage time, worst first.
- Median utility
- 7.5 hrs
- typical customer
- Worst utility
- 22.2 hrs
- Missoula Electric Coop, Inc
- Best utility
- 0.2 hrs
- Fall River Rural Elec Coop Inc
- Utilities reporting
- 6
- of 752 nationwide
Every reporting Montana utility, worst outage time first
| # | Utility | Outage time/yr | Outages/yr | vs US median |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Missoula Electric Coop, IncCooperative | 22.2 hrs1332 min | 2.4 | 7.5× worse |
| 2 | Flathead Electric Coop IncCooperative | 14.8 hrs886 min | 2.3 | 5.0× worse |
| 3 | Black Hills Power, Inc.Investor Owned | 12.6 hrs756 min | 3.4 | 4.2× worse |
| 4 | Montana-Dakota Utilities CoInvestor Owned | 2.4 hrs146 min | 1.2 | 1.2× better |
| 5 | NorthWestern Energy LLC - (MT)Investor Owned | 2.1 hrs125 min | 1.1 | 1.4× better |
| 6 | Fall River Rural Elec Coop IncCooperative | 0.2 hrs14 min | 0.1 | 12.3× 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.
Only 6 utilities in Montana reported, so this ranking covers part of the state rather than all of it. Utilities that filed no reliability data are left out entirely rather than counted as zero.