Press & reporter kit
Live, citable, embeddable US power-outage data — county-level outage counts from ODIN, the U.S. Department of Energy's county outage data (not every utility reports into it), 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>for a county,/outage/<state>/<county>/<city>for a city — live customer counts, the utility's official restoration time when posted, and our independent estimate beside it. - Event reports: news publishing is closed for now — no report can be published, by a person or automatically, until our publishing tool shows the reviewer the full article, its sources and how it interprets them. When it reopens, reports on major outages appear at /news/, with the numbers as they stood at publication and, while the outage is still going, a live counter.
How to cite
Attribute as “When's the Power Back?” 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
Many 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 from the federal county outage data wherever utilities report into it — 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, leaning on past outages in the same place while that trend is thin, and published even when the utility posts nothing. When the data can't support a time yet, the page says so in plain words ("gathering data", "holding steady — no clear recovery yet", "too soon to tell the trend") and, where we have the record, shows how long past outages there took.
- We grade ourselves in public. When a county outage that reached 200 or more customers ends, our county-wide estimate is re-run at each of its readings after its peak where the time was not withheld, from the outage's own recovery trend, and scored against when power actually returned — including misses — and the accuracy page publishes the results for the most recently graded outages, under a versioned methodology.
- We grade the utilities too. How often the restoration times utilities post through the federal county outage data moved later, with sample sizes and thresholds: the published analysis — a local accountability angle wherever a state or utility has enough graded outages to be named.
- Independent and unofficial — not affiliated with any utility or government agency. For emergencies, readers belong with 911 and their utility.
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 the project and how it's made: About · Data sources.