Utilities shut off power to customers across the country 13.4 million times in 2024, according to the nation’s first state-by-state analysis released this week.
That’s far more shutoffs than consumer advocates had anticipated, highlighting the scope of the energy affordability crisis that has worsened in the intervening years. Rapidly rising electricity demand, uncertainty about future supply, utility spending on fixing aging power lines, and extreme weather are only driving costs higher. Even as U.S. natural gas prices remain stable, the Iran war is driving up the cost of gasoline.
“We had previously estimated it would have been about 9 million shutoffs per year based on available data from states,” Jean Su, a senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, said in an interview. “Thirteen million is phenomenally brutal.”
The U.S. Energy Information Administration report took three years and a directive from Congress to generate. Utilities are not required to disclose shutoff data in every state, which made a true accounting previously challenging.
