Mid-Ohio Energy members enjoy a 99.9% reliability rate and consistently low interruption times. Mid-Ohio Energy's 2024 SAIDI score, which measures how many outage minutes the average member experiences each year, was 86.92.

This means an average member would only be without power for less than an hour and a half— for the ENTIRE YEAR! For reference, the average Ohio electric utility's score is more than double this number, at nearly 200 minutes per year.

This rating aligns with our reliability scores for recent years, and demonstrates the cooperative’s long-term investment in, and commitment to, reliable, accessible power. But when the lights go out, what causes it?

By number of cases, the leading causes of service interruptions were:

• Damage to equipment by small animals (while your co-op invests annually in installing animal guards in substations and other problem areas, we still have creatures that find a way to cause problems!)
• Damage to poles due to car, truck, and farm machinery accidents

By outage time, the leading causes of interruptions were:

• Vehicle accidents (including farm machinery) with electrical poles
• Damage to service lines by wind and trees
• Substation outages

Although there were significantly more cases of small animal-caused outages than vehicle accident-caused interruptions (44 versus 32), the complexity of problems caused by vehicles hitting poles resulted in more total outage time (about 29 minutes versus about seven minutes). This is because animal damage generally only requires the replacement of one part, while vehicle accidents often create broken poles or severely damaged equipment. Repairing such damage is often extensive, requiring time-consuming fixes like drilling holes, placing new poles in the ground, and connecting replacement equipment to the grid.

Mid-Ohio Energy’s operations team is always looking for ways to reduce interruption time for members, including implementing advanced grid management software, practicing industry-leading equipment maintenance policies, and participating in continuing training programs.

You can aid us in our commitment to a safety-minded community by:

• Reporting outages or downed lines to us immediately. Stay at least 30 feet away from downed power lines — they could be live!
• Slowing down and giving space for trucks and crews.
• Reporting damaged equipment or trees close to lines that may need attention.
• Staying at least 10 feet away from power lines when operating farm machinery.

Outage cases by cause for 2024.