Power Out? Louisiana Loses Electricity 3rd Most In America

At this writing, AEP SWEPCO, Southwestern Electric Power Company is reporting there are nearly 14,000 customers without power in our area.

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And this is actually good news. At the height of the storms this week, over 20,000 customers were in the dark, and SWEPCO is only one of several power companies to service Louisiana.

All these companies were reporting thousands without electricity during the course of this week.

If it seems to you like the power is out in Louisiana more often than it happens in other states, you'd actually be right.

The power goes out here A LOT. In fact, according to the MRO Electric analysis concerning the electrical reliability data from the United States Energy Information Administration, there are only two states that have more power outages than we do in Louisiana.

MRO looked at the frequency and duration of power outages across the country and when it comes to time in the dark, Louisiana is near the top.

The study discovered that in Louisiana, there are, on average, 2.34 power outages per customer. Only Maine with 3.9 outages and West Virginia with 2.8 outages per year, are worse than Louisiana.

We're in the dark more than power customers in Alaska, who only have an average of 2.2 outages per year. For the record, the national average is 1.62 outages per year, so we have about 35% more outages than the average.

And just how long is the power out? According to the study, Louisiana power customers see approximately 6.23 hours of electrical downtime each year.

So, when it goes down, it's about a full work day before it returns. And those 6 hours can be miserable in the heat of summer when you're trying to sleep.

The National Average for downtime is 5.15 hours so we're just under 21% longer in the dark than average.

Want to see the full report for us and all the other states? Just go HERE.