Power outages in Central Ohio: how often, how long, and what happens to the water

How often the power goes out, and for how long, is a number the electric utility reports to the state every year. This page sets out AEP Ohio's own figures as filed with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio for 2015 to 2025 and the standards they are measured against, five notable outages since 2008, and what the Ohio Department of Health, Ready.gov and the Consumer Product Safety Commission say an outage means for a well, a water heater, a house left cold and a generator.

Last updated September 2026 · Reliability figures are AEP Ohio's filings with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio; outage and safety statements are the named agencies', each read September 24, 2026 · No prices on this page; the Estimate Builder carries those · Part of the knowledge base

How outages are measured

The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio holds each investor-owned electric utility to two reliability numbers, and the utility reports its actual figures every year. The first, called SAIFI, is how many times the average customer lost power in the year: customer interruptions divided by customers served. The second, called CAIDI, is how long the average interruption lasted, in minutes, from the loss of power to its restoration. An interruption counts only if the power is fully out for more than five minutes. Each figure is reported two ways: after exclusions, which leaves out major event days, the worst storm days of the year by a statistical test, and transmission outages; and before exclusions, which counts everything.

These are AEP Ohio's figures for its whole service area, about 1.5 million customers in 61 counties (1,543,930 customers served in 2025, by its filing), not for Central Ohio alone. Rural electric cooperatives and city-owned electric systems are not in the commission's reports at all, so a house served by one of them is not described here; what those utilities report to the U.S. Energy Information Administration is on the page on electric reliability in Central Ohio, utility by utility.

AEP Ohio, 2015 to 2025

Leaving out the major storm days, the average AEP Ohio customer lost power between 0.87 and 1.30 times a year over these eleven years, and a typical interruption lasted between about 130 and 158 minutes. Counting every day, 2022 stands out: an average interruption of 342.91 minutes, the year of the June storms and the ordered load shedding. Dividing the filing's total customer minutes by customers served, a calculation made here and not a figure the commission publishes, the average customer was without power about 595 minutes, nearly ten hours, in 2022 counting every day, against about 159 minutes with the storm days left out.

The filed figures ran above the commission's standard for interruptions per customer in 2018 and 2019, and for minutes per interruption in 2018, 2023 and 2024; from 2021 on, AEP Ohio's own filings note that its standards and its actual figures use different definitions of a major event day, so the later comparisons are not exactly like for like; the commission's rule says missing the same standard two years in a row is a violation of the rule, and no commission finding about those years was located for this page. By an order of July 10, 2024, the commission set tighter standards from 2025, 1.13 interruptions and 146 minutes, down from 1.18 and 148, and AEP Ohio's 2025 figures met both.

The big outages

June 2022 is the best documented. The commission's staff report says storms on June 13 damaged transmission lines, and on June 14 and 15 the grid operator PJM directed AEP Ohio to shed load in the Columbus area three times, while highs ran 92 to 94 degrees. AEP Ohio's Columbus district alone had 351,463 customers affected. Load shedding was the largest single cause of lost customer minutes, ahead of trees from outside the utility's right-of-way and high winds. The staff concluded the heat alone would likely not have caused the outages, since highs of 95 and 97 a week later required no load shedding, and it described how, when power returns on a hot day, every air conditioner in a hot house starts at once and pushes demand back up. For the Ike windstorm, figures differ: a National Weather Service paper says nearly two million Ohio customers lost power, and a higher figure circulates in news reports that could not be checked at a source, so only the Weather Service figure is given here. The storms themselves are on the page on hail, wind, tornadoes and ice in Central Ohio.

What an outage does to a house's water

On a public water system the water usually keeps coming, though Ready.gov notes an outage can disrupt water service; on a private well it stops. The Ohio Department of Health says a well's pump will not run in a power outage, that only the limited water already stored in the pressure tank and the pipes is available, and that water treatment units stop too, which can make the water unsafe to drink. If a house must be left in winter without power, the department's list is to turn off the pump, drain the plumbing from the top of the house down, open the pressure tank's drain, drain the water heater, and put a small amount of antifreeze in the toilet bowl and the sink and tub traps. When power returns, it says to make sure the water heater is full before turning its power back on, and to run every faucet for at least ten minutes. Where a sump pump keeps ground water out of a basement, it says to move valuables off the basement floor. Well depth and yield by county are on the page on private wells in Central Ohio, and how cold a Central Ohio winter night gets is on the page on freezing weather by station.

Generators and carbon monoxide

Ready.gov, the federal preparedness site, says generators and their fuel should always be used outdoors, at least 20 feet from windows, doors and attached garages, and to have carbon monoxide detectors with battery backup on every level of the home. A Consumer Product Safety Commission staff report counts 770 carbon monoxide deaths nationally from generators alone from 2011 to 2021, and 157 deaths involving a generator used during a power outage, mostly for weather. Where it was known whether a carbon monoxide alarm was present, one was present in only 15 percent of the generator deaths. The same report notes its counts for 2020 and 2021 are incomplete. Ohio's rule on carbon monoxide alarms in houses is on the page on the Ohio fires, floods and collapses that changed building rules.

Sources

Every figure, date and quotation on this page comes from one of these documents, read on the date given. Where two of them disagree, the page says so.

• Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, AEP Ohio Reliability Data, and AEP Ohio's annual reliability reports under Ohio Administrative Code 4901:1-10-10 for 2015 to 2025, from the commission's case records, for example the 2025 report and the 2022 report; read September 24, 2026.
• Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, Opinion and Order, Case 20-1111-EL-ESS, July 10, 2024; read September 24, 2026.
• Public Utilities Commission of Ohio staff, report on the summer 2022 electric outages, January 3, 2023; read September 24, 2026.
• NOAA, Service Assessment, The Historic Derecho of June 29, 2012, January 2013, Table 2; read September 24, 2026.
• National Weather Service, Wilmington, Ohio, Public Information Statement on the remnants of Hurricane Ike, September 19, 2008; read September 24, 2026.
• Stoppkotte, Lese and Pavlow (National Weather Service) and Baker, The 14 September 2008 Ohio Valley high wind event, conference preprint 13B.2; read September 24, 2026.
• National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database, ice storm record of February 1, 2011; read September 24, 2026.
• Ohio Department of Health, Power Outages and Private Water Systems; read September 24, 2026.
• Ready.gov, Power Outages, updated June 4, 2026; read September 24, 2026.
• U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission staff, Fatal Incidents Associated with Non-Fire Carbon Monoxide Poisoning from Engine-Driven Generators and Other Engine-Driven Tools, 2011 to 2021, June 2022; read September 24, 2026.

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