King County, Washington Power Outages, 2015 to 2023

King County, Washington had 33 major outages from 2015 to 2023

Below middle outage time among US counties

Residents here averaged 0.72 times the US outage time per person and 0.90 times the Washington rate. It ranks 18 of 34 in the state, where 1 has the most. Data confidence: High, with 9 years of records.

3.7major outages per year

9 of 9years with a major outage

174 hrslongest major outage

Nov, Janhardest months

November and January made up 37% of this county's outage time. The largest outage on record began Jan 12, 2021, reached 215,586 customers, and left at least 200 customers out for 109.0 hours.

Outage time per resident, rated Washington counties

MostLeast

Outage impact by year

Customer-hours without power. 1,000 customers out for 2 hours is 2,000 customer-hours.

2.5M

7.5M

10M

2015'152016'162017'172018'182019'192020'202021'212022'222023'23

Show yearly numbers

Year	Customer-hours	Reported outages	Major outages
2015	5,350,438	363	4
2016	3,269,652	574	3
2017	4,478,230	523	5
2018	2,164,240	483	3
2019	2,436,680	498	2
2020	3,027,060	513	3
2021	8,923,690	517	5
2022	4,575,202	500	5
2023	2,796,532	532	3

When outages hit

Share of this county's customer-hours by month.

10%

15%

20%

JanJFebFMarMAprAMayMJunJJulJAugASepSOctONovNDecD

Largest outages on record

Start date	Hours	Peak customers	Customer-hours
Jan 12, 2021	109.0	215,586	3,911,713
Aug 29, 2015	76.2	117,262	1,909,203
Oct 24, 2021	63.2	110,243	1,506,264
Nov 17, 2015	19.5	114,507	1,421,236
Nov 13, 2017	63.5	132,417	1,346,647

Hours measure how long at least 200 customers in the county were out. Most customers get power back sooner.

Size your backup battery

Start with what you would keep running. Wattages are typical averages, so check your own appliances.

Phones, Wi-Fi, lights, about 60 WRefrigerator, about 60 WChest freezer, about 40 WGas furnace fan, about 160 W

Hours to cover: 24

1,700 Whof battery capacity, allowing for about 15% conversion loss

If anyone relies on medical equipment, plan that with their provider. Run portable fuel generators outdoors only, at least 20 feet from doors, windows and vents. See the outage checklist.

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How to read this

A major outage lasted at least 8 hours and reached customers equal to at least 1% of county residents.
Records cover outages of at least 200 customers in a county. They do not show what happened on your street.
Utilities that do not report can make a county look better than it is. Data ends in 2023. Read the full method.