Press & reporter kit
Live, citable, embeddable US power-outage data — county-level outage counts for the whole country from ODIN, the U.S. Department of Energy's county outage data, plus live detail from hundreds of utilities' own outage maps, with an independent restoration estimate we grade publicly.
During a storm: what to point readers at
- A state overview:
whensthepowerback.com/outage/<state>/— e.g. /outage/oh/ — live county rankings, refreshed about every 15 minutes. - A county or city page:
/outage/<state>/<county>— live customer counts, the utility's official restoration time when posted, and our independent estimate beside it. - Event articles: major outages auto-publish structured summaries at /news/ showing the numbers as they stood at publication, plus a live counter.
How to cite
Attribute as “When's the Power Back, a national outage tracker” with a link. Our aggregate statistics — the accuracy record and the restoration-time reliability figures — are quotable with that attribution (terms); the exact convention, dataset URL, and versioning are on the research page's “How to cite” section. Numbers on live pages carry their own as-of timestamps — cite the timestamp with the number.
What makes this source different
Most outage stories cite an aggregate outage counter for one number: how many customers are out. That answers the editor's question. The reader who clicked is asking a different one — when is my power coming back? — and that's the question this site is named after. Keep whatever count you cite; here's what the count alone can't tell your readers:
- Where, exactly. Free county-level counts for every US county from the federal ODIN county outage data — and, where a utility publishes it, city-, ZIP- and outage-level detail read from the utility's own live outage map.
- When it's back. The utility's posted restoration time when there is one, and our independent estimate beside it — computed from the outage's own recovery trend, published even when the utility posts nothing, and honest enough to say "too early to tell" when the data can't support a number.
- We grade ourselves in public. Every completed restoration estimate is scored against when power actually returned — including misses — on the accuracy page, under a versioned methodology.
- We grade the utilities too. How often utility-posted restoration times moved later, with sample sizes and thresholds: the published analysis — a local accountability angle for any market we cover.
- Independent and unofficial — not affiliated with any utility or government agency. For emergencies, readers belong with 911 and their utility, and our pages say so.
Embed the live widget
A small live status card for any US county — drop it into a storm liveblog or a weather page once and it tracks every event hands-off. Pick the location and the snippet below updates, with a live preview of exactly what your readers will see:
Params: fips (the county's 5-digit federal FIPS code, required), name (optional label), theme=dark|light. The card carries a small attribution link back to the county's live page — please keep it; it is the only thing we ask for.
Reach us
Media inquiries via the contact form — include your outlet and a reply address. For background on who runs this and how it's made: About · Data sources.