Reliability and service standards
The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission is committed to ensuring Minnesotans have reliable electric service. To help the Commission monitor service quality, Minnesota’s investor-owned utilities— Minnesota Power, Otter Tail Power and Xcel Energy —submit annual Safety, Reliability, and Service Quality Reports as required by law (Chapter 7826). These reports cover key metrics like outage durations, frequency of interruptions, and call center response times. The Commission reviews these reports on a regular basis to ensure utilities provide reliable service to customers.
The Commission sets annual reliability goals for each utility, benchmarked against the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) reliability data. This data includes national reliability averages for utilities of varying sizes. Minnesota’s goals aim for investor-owned utilities to outperform most comparable utilities in metrics like outage duration and frequency.
SAIDI, SAIFI, and CAIDI results
System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) measures the annual average outage duration for each customer served in hours.
System Average Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI) measures the average number of disruptions for a customer in a year.
Customer Average Interruption Duration Index (CAIDI) measures the average outage duration (or conversely, restoration time) for a given customer.
SAIDI, SAIFI, and CAIDI metrics vary annually due to numerous external factors affecting utility grid reliability. These may include equipment failures, animal interference (e.g., squirrels), weather events, downed trees, vehicle accidents, or planned construction for equipment upgrades. These factors, individually or combined, can increase the frequency or duration of outages. To account for this variability, utilities normalize these indices to adjust for outlier data points, typically caused by storms or other weather-related events. Both normalized and non-normalized results provide important insights into the impact of reliability issues on ratepayers within a given year and and over time, as well as how each utility meets its IEEE 1366 standards.
Xcel
Xcel electric service quality interactive map
Xcel Energy created an interactive map to showcase electric service quality. The map displays electric reliability and service quality data as well as low-income program participation information across Xcel’s Minnesota service territory. It integrates this data with demographic data from the US Census Bureau. To protect customer confidentiality and privacy, Census Blocks with 15 or less Xcel Energy electric premises are excluded. Explore the map here
Otter Tail
Minnesota Power
Utility summaries
In 2019, the Commission required the investor-owned utilities to develop webpages with a short summary and overview of their electric service quality reporting information. These overviews provide a snapshot of their work for the general public and are available on their website.
Docket numbers
| Year | Xcel Energy | Otter Tail | MN Power |
| 2019 | 20-406 | 20-401 | 20-404 |
| 2020 | 21-237 | 21-225 | 21-230 |
| 2021 | 22-162 | 22-159 | 22-163 |
| 2022 | 23-73 | 23-76 | 23-75 |
| 2023 | 24-27 | 24-30 | 24-29 |
Gas service quality reports
The Commission recognized the importance of establishing service standards for investor-owned natural gas utilities, even though no state law mandates such standards The reports include information on customer call center response times, service interruptions, emergency response times, and customer complaints. Learn more here
Utility Complaint?
Are you experiencing issues with your electrical service? Please contact the PUC’s Consumer Affairs Office for help. You can also call the Consumer Affairs Office at 651.296.0406 or 800.657.3782 or email at consumer.puc@state.mn.us.