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Major power outages cost U.S. residential and business customers an estimated average of over $67 billion a year between 2018 and 2024, according to researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Researchers said those costs soared over those seven years, reaching $121 billion in 2024 alone.
"These power disruptions pose serious risks to public health and safety and drain billions of dollars from the U.S. economy," researchers wrote in a March 2026 analysis.
Power outages are becoming more frequent, longer, and more expensive. Here's what consumers can do to prepare.
The number of major outages nationwide grew 29% during the seven-year period, from 4,666 to 6,533, according to researchers. The typical outage also expanded from lasting 9.6 hours to 11.8 hours.
Alexis Abramson, professor of climate and dean of the climate school at Columbia University, told Yahoo Finance that a combination of increasingly frequent extreme weather events and an aging power infrastructure is to blame.
"Much of the transmission network is decades old, making it more vulnerable," Abramson said. Data centers, buildings with electric heat pumps, and electric vehicles increase the power required for heating and cooling during temperature extremes. "But certain parts of the grid are not set up to handle the increased demand."
Abramson also points to wildfire-related preventive shutoffs, particularly in California. Utilities may proactively de-energize lines during high fire-risk weather and typically give customers about 48 hours' notice.
The National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University has a Preparedness Wizard to help families make an emergency preparedness plan. For power outages, recommendations include:
Have an emergency kit with several days' worth of water (1 gallon per person per day), nonperishable food, a flashlight for every household member, extra batteries, and a hand-crank or battery-powered NOAA weather radio for alerts when phone/internet networks fail.
Take an inventory of everything in your home that relies on electricity and stock portable power banks and chargers when practical.
Have a family communication plan in place and keep phones charged, if possible.
The single most dangerous thing you can do in an outage is run a generator too close to the house, Abramson warned. "Carbon monoxide kills more than 400 people a year, and portable generators are behind a huge share of those deaths."
Experts advise users to keep a generator at least 20 feet away from the house, with the exhaust pointed away from the residence.
program at Florida State University, told Yahoo Finance in an email that "grid strengthening gets discussed as an engineering problem. It is also a budget problem."
He said utility capital is finite, and utilities are being asked to do two things at once: Harden the grid against storms and build additional capacity for very large new customers, such as data centers.
"You can end up with a system that is very good at delivering power to a new industrial load and no better than it was at keeping the lights on at a house," he added.
McNees said a growing number of states are requiring very large electricity users to pay for the additional capacity their demand triggers, rather than spreading the cost to every customer on the regional grid, including neighborhoods.
"Oregon is the clearest case. Rates effective July 8 raised the data center class about 29% while residential fell about 1.3%, across roughly 963,000 customers," McNees said.
Meanwhile, Abramson noted that transmission line expansion is hindered by delays in siting and permitting and by an urgent need for regulatory reform to speed the process. Underground lines are another potential solution, but expensive. She also points to "smart-grid technology, microgrids, and battery storage for flexibility, faster fault isolation, and localized resilience."
Whether a backup generator that powers the entire house is worth the cost depends on how often outages occur and how long they typically last.
"Yes, in Florida, I can tell you exactly why. It is groceries," McNees said. "I have watched friends empty a full freezer into the trash after a storm. Then there is the part that never shows up on a receipt, which is sitting in a dark house in August with no air conditioning. In Florida in August, for somebody elderly, that is not an inconvenience. That is a health risk."
Abramson noted that a whole-house generator can cost over $10,000 to install, "so it comes down to geography and need."
If outages in your area are rare and short, a portable generator that can power select appliances, such as a refrigerator or medical equipment, may be the smarter buy, she said.
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