Power outage history
Santa Cruz County California
24hours
without power for the average customer in a typical year, 2018–2025
14th most of 56 in California 3.7× the national median
Every day since 2015
Eleven years, one night at a time
Each cell is a day. The brighter it is, the larger the share of Santa Cruz's customers who were without power at that day's worst moment.
Year by year
Hours in the dark, per customer
2023 was the worst well-recorded year, at 47 hours for the average customer. Hatched years have a thin record and are left out of the averages.
Santa Cruz, hours without power per customer
The record
The biggest outages since 2015
Ranked by customer-hours lost: customers out multiplied by how long they stayed out. Times are local.
| Began | Storm | Peak out | Share | Lasted | 90% restored | Customer-hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 19, 2020 | Wildfire | 10,467 | 9% | 28.5 d | 13.2 d | 2.9M |
| Oct 26, 2019 | Windstorm | 57,052 | 48% | 2.9 d | 40 h | 2.3M |
| Feb 4, 2024 | Windstorm | 36,292 | 31% | 5.4 d | 2.3 d | 1.4M |
| Mar 21, 2023 | Windstorm | 30,226 | 26% | 5.3 d | 21 h | 1.3M |
| Jan 19, 2021 | Windstorm | 23,302 | 20% | 4.0 d | 3.4 d | 1.2M |
| Feb 21, 2023 | Windstorm | 22,155 | 19% | 8.0 d | 7.7 d | 1.2M |
| Jan 10, 2023 | No storm report | 10,086 | 9% | 7.0 d | 4.2 d | 849k |
| Jan 4, 2023 | No storm report | 19,479 | 16% | 4.4 d | 6.0 h | 764k |
| Dec 24, 2025 | Thunderstorms | 26,822 | 23% | 3.6 d | 39 h | 695k |
| Oct 10, 2019 | No storm report | 42,930 | 36% | 31 h | 29 h | 484k |
| Oct 9, 2019 | No storm report | 43,815 | 37% | 10 h | 21 h | 398k |
| Feb 9, 2020 | Windstorm | 26,597 | 22% | 2.1 d | 5.5 h | 363k |
| Oct 25, 2020 | Windstorm | 13,402 | 11% | 47 h | 30 h | 361k |
| Dec 14, 2024 | No storm report | 25,554 | 22% | 37 h | 28 h | 303k |
| Aug 16, 2020 | Wildfire | 19,293 | 16% | 42 h | 17 h | 259k |
| Dec 10, 2022 | No storm report | 12,136 | 10% | 31 h | 8.2 h | 190k |
| Dec 30, 2022 | Windstorm | 7,899 | 7% | 2.1 d | 33 h | 181k |
| Oct 24, 2021 | No storm report | 6,847 | 6% | 2.1 d | 45 h | 173k |
| Nov 6, 2024 | No storm report | 16,132 | 14% | 16 h | 11 h | 126k |
| Mar 14, 2023 | Windstorm | 9,864 | 8% | 33 h | 31 h | 118k |
| Nov 26, 2019 | Windstorm | 14,250 | 12% | 22 h | 19 h | 109k |
| Jan 10, 2023 | No storm report | 18,803 | 16% | 6.2 h | 18 h | 107k |
| Oct 11, 2021 | No storm report | 9,421 | 8% | 26 h | 22 h | 91k |
| Jan 9, 2023 | No storm report | 15,877 | 13% | 17 h | 22 h | 79k |
| Mar 9, 2023 | Windstorm | 8,143 | 7% | 21 h | 25 h | 73k |
| Jan 6, 2019 | Flooding | 5,764 | 5% | 20 h | 23 h | 60k |
| Aug 4, 2021 | No storm report | 5,820 | 5% | 17 h | 8.8 h | 59k |
| Feb 4, 2025 | Windstorm | 4,314 | 4% | 22 h | – | 54k |
| Jun 25, 2022 | No storm report | 3,596 | 3% | 18 h | – | 50k |
| Dec 13, 2021 | Flooding | 3,865 | 3% | 27 h | – | 49k |
After the peak
How fast the lights come back
Each line is one major outage, from its peak. The amber line is the typical path.
When it happens
The outage clock
Customer-hours out by month (rings, January innermost) and local hour, 2018–2025.
What was happening
Weather behind the outages
Each outage is matched to NOAA storm reports for Santa Cruz from twelve hours before it began to its peak. Matching shows coincidence, not proof of cause.
- Windstorm 46%
- No storm on record 32%
- Wildfire 17%
- Thunderstorms 3.8%
- Flooding 0.7%
Who keeps the lights on
Utilities serving Santa Cruz
As each utility reports to the Energy Information Administration for its whole California territory, not this county alone. Outage minutes include major storm days.
| Utility | Type | Outage min / yr | Excl. major storms | Outages / yr | Residential ¢/kWh | Customers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pacific Gas & Electric Co. | Investor Owned | 273 | 208 | 1.63 | 37.5 | 5.1M |
| Central Coast Community Energy | Community Choice Aggregator | – | – | – | – | – |
EIA Form 861, latest year each utility reported. Outage minutes are SAIDI, the yearly minutes the average customer goes without power; outages a year are SAIFI.
Next door
Neighbouring counties
- Santa Cruz (this county) 24 h
- Monterey 9.9 h
- San Mateo 8.6 h
- Santa Clara 4.7 h
- San Benito 3.1 h
About these numbers
Notes
Outages come from the EAGLE-I record of utility outage maps collected every 15 minutes by Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Hours without power are customer-hours divided by the county's 118,299 electricity customers. Averages use well-covered years from 2018. Outages shorter than 15 minutes, and utilities that publish no outage map, are not in the record, so these figures understate the total. How every number is made →