Press & reporter kit
Live, citable, embeddable US power-outage data — county-level outage counts for the whole country from the federal ODIN dataset, plus live feeds from hundreds of utilities, with an independent restoration estimate we grade publicly.
During a storm: what to point readers at
- A state overview:
whensthepowerback.com/outage/<state>/— e.g. /outage/oh/ — live county rankings, refreshed about every 15 minutes. - A county or city page:
/outage/<state>/<county>— live customer counts, the utility's official restoration time when posted, and our independent estimate beside it. - Event articles: major outages auto-publish structured summaries at /news/ showing the numbers as they stood at publication, plus a live counter.
How to cite
Attribute as “When's the Power Back, a national outage tracker” with a link. Our aggregate statistics — the accuracy record and the restoration-time reliability figures — are quotable with that attribution (terms); the exact convention, dataset URL, and versioning are on the research page's “How to cite” section. Numbers on live pages carry their own as-of timestamps — cite the timestamp with the number.
What makes this source different
Most outage stories cite an aggregate outage counter for one number: how many customers are out. That answers the editor's question. The reader who clicked is asking a different one — when is my power coming back? — and that's the question this site is named after. Keep whatever count you cite; here's what the count alone can't tell your readers:
- Where, exactly. Free county-level counts for every US county from the federal ODIN dataset — and, where a utility publishes it, city-, ZIP-, and incident-level detail read from the utility's own live feed.
- When it's back. The utility's posted restoration time when there is one, and our independent estimate beside it — computed from the outage's own recovery trend, published even when the utility posts nothing, and honest enough to say "too early to tell" when the data can't support a number.
- We grade ourselves in public. Every completed restoration estimate is scored against when power actually returned — including misses — on the accuracy page, under a versioned methodology.
- We grade the utilities too. How often utility-posted restoration times moved later, with sample sizes and thresholds: the published analysis — a local accountability angle for any market we cover.
- Independent and unofficial — not affiliated with any utility or government agency. For emergencies, readers belong with 911 and their utility, and our pages say so.
Embed the live widget
A small live status card for any US county — drop it into a storm liveblog or a weather page once and it tracks every event hands-off. Pick the location and the snippet below updates, with a live preview of exactly what your readers will see:
Params: fips (the county's 5-digit federal FIPS code, required), name (optional label), theme=dark|light. The card carries a small attribution link back to the county's live page — please keep it; it is the only thing we ask for.
Reach us
Media inquiries via the contact form — include your outlet and a reply address. For background on who runs this and how it's made: About · Data sources.