Terms of use
Plain-language terms for a free informational site.
What this site is — and isn't
When's the Power Back? is an independent, unofficial aggregator of public outage data. We are not your electric utility and not affiliated with any utility or government agency. We can't restore power, dispatch crews, or see your account. In any emergency — downed lines, medical need, fire — call 911 and your utility directly. Never make life-safety or medical decisions based on this site; anyone who depends on powered medical equipment should ask their utility about its medical or life-support registry, and keep their own emergency plan.
Accuracy — honest, not guaranteed
Counts come from public sources that vary in coverage and freshness; missing data is not the same as zero outages. Restoration estimates are algorithmic forecasts from each outage's recovery trend — we label how each one was derived and grade our own accuracy publicly, but no estimate is a promise. The site is provided "as is", without warranties of any kind, and to the maximum extent permitted by law we accept no liability for decisions made from it.
Acceptable use & what's licensed how
Different parts of this site carry different terms — stated here so there's no ambiguity:
- Public facts from our sources (ODIN county outage counts from the U.S. Department of Energy, National Weather Service alerts, utilities' own published numbers) are published by the government agencies and utilities they come from — we claim no ownership of them; use them under their sources' own terms.
- Our aggregate statistics (the accuracy and reliability figures on Accuracy and Research, and the public summary data they cite) may be quoted and cited with attribution ("When's the Power Back?", with a link). See how to cite.
- Individual graded forecasts and bulk access: the record of each graded forecast behind our accuracy figures is not published, and apart from the public summary data above we don't offer bulk or programmatic access to our data. Both are reserved for a future authenticated API — register interest. No availability, pricing, or service level is promised until it exists. (The outage history our county and city pages show is public.)
- Editorial content and code (page text, guides, news articles, this site's software) are proprietary. Personal and newsroom use of the pages is welcome with attribution and a link; no bulk scraping, resale, or republication without written permission.
- No use that misrepresents this site as a utility or official source.
Ads & affiliate disclosure
Guides may contain disclosed affiliate links; display advertising, if ever enabled, follows the placement policy on the partners page and the privacy policy.
Changes & contact
Terms change only via a dated update on this page. Questions: the contact page.