How often do utilities push back their restoration times?
A living analysis, recomputed continuously as outages complete. The figures below are the latest verified aggregates — the "data updated" stamp under them is the dataset's own time. Methodology last reviewed 2026-07-29 (v2026-07-29.v2).
By state
The same ledger, grouped the way the rest of the site is — by where the outage happened. Only states with at least 5 graded utility-posted events show; smaller samples add too much noise to compare fairly.
| State | Events | Slip % | Avg revisions | Utility err | Ours err |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| California | 8 | 88% | 19.3× | ~3.8 h | ~6.4 h |
| Oregon | 7 | 86% | 2.0× | ~1 h | ~1.2 h |
| Michigan | 7 | 57% | 1.3× | ~5 h | ~1.2 h |
| New York | 6 | 100% | 4.5× | ~2 h | ~1.8 h |
| Washington | 5 | 60% | 2.2× | ~2.3 h | ~3.4 h |
By utility (named)
Per-utility numbers publish only when a named utility has at least 10 graded events in the ledger — a pre-registered threshold, fixed here in advance. Utilities close to the threshold are shown below without names, so the sample is honest.
| Utility | Events | Slip % | Avg revisions | Utility err | Ours err |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PACIFICORP | 10 | 90% | 3.3× | ~1.2 h | ~1.4 h |
What we found
This report grades the restoration times that reach us through the free national county feed (ODIN) — not the times a utility posts on its own outage map, which this dataset never sees. Read every figure below as “of the posted times we recorded”. When a power outage starts, the utility usually posts an estimated time of restoration (ETR) on its outage map. Customers plan around it: whether to buy ice, book a hotel, move a medical device. This report tracks a simple question — once posted, does that time hold? Across the completed outages we have graded so far, a majority saw the posted time moved later at least once before the lights actually came back, and multiple revisions per outage are routine (live figures above).
Two honest framings belong next to that finding. First, a revision is not deception — early ETRs are posted before crews have assessed damage, and utilities update them as reality comes in; a moving estimate can still be a good-faith one. Second, on the current sample the utilities' posted times have been, on median, slightly more accurate than our own independent estimates on the same events — we grade ourselves by the same ruler and publish both numbers. The practical takeaway for customers is not "distrust the utility"; it is that the first posted time is an early draft, and planning should carry a margin.
Methodology
Ground truth. We track every US county outage from first report to restoration (the data sources are the DOE/ORNL ODIN national feed plus ~290 utilities' own public outage feeds). An event's actual restoration time is when its outage count first fell to the restored level and stayed there — the same definition our own estimates are graded against publicly.
What counts as a pushback. While an outage is active we sample the utility's posted ETR on every collection pass. A pushback is the posted time moving later within the same outage. Moving earlier, or posting no ETR at all, is not counted against the utility.
Error. For each completed event, every posted ETR is compared against the actual restoration: the median absolute error in hours is the event's score. Our own estimates published during the same event are scored identically — same events, same ruler.
Scope and limits. The sample is completed county-grain events from June 2026 onward where the serving utility posted at least one ETR; it grows daily and the live count is shown above. Utility participation and feed grain vary. Named per-utility reliability tables publish only when a utility has at least 10 graded events in the ledger — a pre-registered threshold, fixed here in advance. State breakdowns use a lower threshold (n≥5) because they aggregate across utilities.
How to cite this analysis
Cite as “When's the Power Back? — utility restoration-time reliability (living report)”, with the
date you accessed it, the methodology version shown above the tiles, and a link to this page. The
aggregate figures — sample sizes, headline rates, and the state/utility tables — are also published as machine-readable
JSON at accuracy-summary.json (field definitions ride in its
metrics section; the license block states these same terms). Quoting and citing the published
aggregates with attribution is welcome.
This report publishes aggregate findings, methodology, sample sizes, and update dates. Event-level records and programmatic bulk access are not part of the public report — they are reserved for a possible future API. Contact us if you are interested in future API access (registering interest promises nothing about availability, pricing, or service levels). Questions or corrections: the contact page.
