State Ranks Near Bottom In Electricity Reliability, Federal Data Show

West Virginia has some of the worst electricity reliability in the country, according to federal data.

West Virginia has the most frequent power interruptions except for three states. And it has the longest power interruptions of any state but one.

That’s according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Annual Electric Power Industry Report.

West Virginians experienced an average of nearly three interruptions a year in 2022, and an average duration of more than 15 hours. The U.S. average was 1.4 outages and 5.6 hours.

Most of those interruptions were not during major weather events, such as December 2022’s Winter Storm Elliott, when temperatures plunged into the single digits and below zero.

Only Florida, with two major hurricanes in 2022, had outages with a longer average duration. Alaska, Tennessee and Maine had more annual power interruptions.