Tucson Electric Power Posts Best-Ever Reliability Performance
With summer on the way, Tucson residents know they can count on a few things: hot weather, beautiful monsoon-season sunsets, and top-tier reliability from Tucson Electric Power.
Last year, TEP customers experienced just 42 minutes without power on average over the course of the year – a new record. TEP uses this metric, the System Average Interruption Duration Index, to measure its reliability against other energy providers.
For more than a decade, its SAIDI scores have ranked among the top quartile of results aggregated annually by the Edison Electric Institute. While the nationwide average typically exceeds an hour and a half, TEP’s metrics are measured in minutes.
Last year’s score bested the previous record of 48 minutes, set in 2020. It also improved on the 2024 score of 68 minutes, which still ranked among the top tier of results that averaged above 100 minutes.
Average Minutes Without Power, By Year
- 2019: 54.4 minutes
- 2020: 48.1 minutes
- 2021: 73.8 minutes
- 2022: 61.8 minutes
- 2023: 61.9 minutes
- 2024: 68.4 minutes
- 2025: 41.8 minutes
TEP’s strong SAIDI scores reflect the impact of sustained investments, careful planning and continuous improvement across our system.
“We know our customers count on us to power their everyday life. If we’re doing our jobs well, the lights go on, your homes stay comfortable and things work,” said David Wagner, director of Line Construction. “Our values and our culture place a focus on safety, continuous improvement and innovation. We are really proud of our crews’ efforts to ensure grid resiliency and dependability even while we’re working to support sustainability and affordability.”
What’s behind TEP reliability:
- Targeted investment. In 2025, TEP invested more than $320 million and thousands of hours to maintain and improve the local energy grid, following rigorous maintenance practices that ensure reliability.
- Planning. TEP prepares each year for the summer heat, as well as for the risk of wildfire and for surprisingly chilly desert winters.
- Preparedness. Continual maintenance and key prevention programs help achieve high reliability. TEP uses several methods to assess needed improvements and upgrades, including ground patrols and aerial inspections of transmission lines, monitoring of substation equipment, and critical analysis of distribution circuits.
- Sustainability with reliability. TEP is working toward an aspirational goal of net zero direct greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, without compromising on affordability or reliability.
- Customer communication. TEP is improving communications about the few outages that do happen with texts, emails and push notifications.
Image courtesy Tucson Electric Power
