Biden-⁠Harris Administration Takes Action to Improve Electricity Reliability Through Open Outage Data

Extreme weather events are driving increasing power outages across the nation, especially in underserved communities. America needs robust, comprehensive, and transparent power outage data to inform investments in grid resilience and restoration, deliver immediate benefits to our existing emergency response systems, and provide visibility into equity. Real-time, standardized, and transparent power outage data is essential to improve electricity reliability and ensure that all American communities can benefit from a more electrified future. To advance this goal, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy issued a Call to Action for utilities to share power outage data with the Outage Data Initiative Nationwide (ODIN) last month.

In less than three weeks since the Call to Action, utility commitments have expanded ODIN’s nationwide reach substantially. New commitments from 35 utilities have increased the number of customers in the ODIN network by over 400%. In addition, 13 commitments from outage management system vendors will make it simple and fast for the utilities they serve to share their data transparently. With these commitments, ODIN participation now exceeds 100 utilities in 44 states and Puerto Rico, delivering electricity to over 43 million electric customers (one-quarter of U.S. customers).

Utilities from the following states have made commitments to ODIN:

The following utilities responded to the Call to Action and made a new commitment to sharing real-time, standardized, and transparent power outage data with ODIN:

• Allamakee-Clayton REC
• Barron Electric Cooperative
• Butler County Rural Electric Cooperative
• Butler Rural Electric Cooperative Association, Inc.
• Central Hudson Gas and Electric
• Choctawhatchee Electric Cooperative (CHELCO)
• Consolidated Edison of New York and Orange and Rockland Utilities
• Continental Divide Electric Cooperative, Inc.
• Cordova Electric Cooperative (CEC)
• Dunn Energy Cooperative
• Empire Electric Association, Inc. (Empire)
• Evergy, Inc.
• Eversource Energy
• FirstEnergy
• Hawaiian Electric
• Heartland Power Cooperative
• Henderson Municipal Power & Light (HMP&L)
• Hingham Municipal Lighting Plant
• Jackson Energy Cooperative
• LUMA Energy
• La Plata Electric Association
• Little River Electric Cooperative
• MidAmerican Energy Company
• Midwest Energy & Communications
• Minnesota Valley Electric Cooperative
• National Grid
• Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E)
• Poudre Valley Rural Electric Association, Inc.
• Powder River Energy Corp.
• Rural Electric Cooperative, Inc.
• Southern California Edison
• Tri-County Electric Coop, Inc.
• Trico Electric Co-op, Inc.
• United Power, Inc.
• Vermont Electric Cooperative Inc.

These newly committed utilities join those who were early adopters of ODIN and helped build the momentum needed to implement real-time, standardized, and transparent power outage data nationwide:

• Adams Electric Cooperative, Inc
• Agralite Electric Cooperative
• Avista Utilities
• Beltrami Electric Coop Inc.
• BENCO Electric Cooperative
• Benton PUD
• Berkeley Electric Cooperative
• Blue Ridge Energy
• Brunswick Electric Membership Corporation (BEMC)
• CenterPoint Energy
• Central Lincoln
• Clallam County PUD
• Citizens’ Electric Company
• City of Monroe, NC
• City of Ocala
• City of Shelby
• CORE Electric Cooperative
• Cowlitz Public Utility District #1
• Dakota Electric Association
• Delaware Electric Cooperative
• DEMCO
• Douglas County PUD
• East Central Energy
• Federated Rural Electric Association
• Four County EMC
• Freeborn Mower Electric Cooperative
• Goodhue County Cooperative Electric Association (GCCEA)
• Grand Valley Power
• Grayson Collin Electric Cooperative
• Habersham EMC
• Holy Cross Energy
• Horry Electric Cooperative
• Jefferson County PUD
• Jones-Onslow EMC
• Kandiyohi Power Cooperative
• Knoxville Utilities Board
• Lake Country Power
• Lake Region Electric Cooperative
• Lumbee River EMC
• Mason County PUD #1
• Mason County PUD 3
• McLeod Cooperative Power Association
• Meeker Cooperative Light & Power Association
• MiEnergy Cooperative
• Mille Lacs Energy Cooperative
• Nobles Cooperative Electric
• Norwood Municipal Light (NMLD)
• Orcas Power & Light Cooperative (OPALCO)
• PacifiCorp
• Pend Oreille Public Utility District No. 1
• People’s Energy Cooperative
• Portland General Electric
• Public Utility District No. 1 of Snohomish County (Snohomish County PUD)
• Puget Sound Energy
• Renville-Sibley Cooperative Power Association
• Runestone Electric Association
• Seattle City Light
• Sioux Valley Southwestern Electric Inc. (DBA Sioux Valley Energy)
• South Central Indiana REMC
• Stearns Cooperative Association
• Tacoma Public Utilities
• Tanner Electric Cooperative
• Town of Apex
• Traverse Electric Cooperative, Inc.
• Unitil
• Wild Rice Electric Cooperative
• Wright-Hennepin Cooperative Electric Association

The following outage management system (OMS) vendors committed to implementing ODIN-compliant outage data streams as part of the standard product they offer and making ODIN part of any installation and upgrade:

• Aerinet Solutions
• CGI
• DataCapable
• Esri
• Futura Systems
• Milsoft Utility Solutions
• NISC
• Oracle
• Open Systems International (OSI)
• Schneider Electric
• Star Energy Services
• Sienatech
• Survalent

These commitments will advance data interoperability and transparency and are a step towards a more effective emergency response and a more reliable, more resilient electric grid. Utilities and software vendors that want to join the Outage Data Initiative Nationwide can email ODIN@ornl.gov.

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