When the Power Goes Out, Who Gets It Back First and Why Some Americans Wait Longer

By Alicia Raffinengo

Reporter, Life News Today

WASHINGTON - When electricity fails during a major storm, Americans experience the outage in deeply personal ways. Refrigerators warm. Medical devices shut down. Businesses close. Yet the decision about whose lights come back first is rarely made at the neighborhood level. It is shaped by a complex system of engineering rules, emergency doctrine, regulatory policy and industry advocacy that operates largely outside public view.

One of the most influential actors in that system is the Edison Electric Institute (EEI). It does not own power lines, dispatch repair crews or control switches. But it represents the nation’s investor owned electric utilities, which provide electricity to roughly 250 million Americans, and it plays a central role in shaping the policies and frameworks utilities rely on when justifying rates, investments and outage restoration practices.

EEI is a private trade association, not a government agency. It is composed of shareholder owned utility companies operating as regulated monopolies in all 50 states. Because most Americans cannot choose their electric provider, the most consequential decisions about electricity are made through regulation rather than competition. State public utility commissions approve rates and capital spending, while federal agencies oversee grid reliability, emergency coordination and national resilience planning. EEI exists to influence those regulatory and legislative environments on behalf of its members.

That influence becomes most visible when the power goes out. Utilities across the country follow similar restoration sequences, and EEI has publicly described the logic behind them. Restoration typically begins with making the system safe by addressing downed lines and electrical hazards. Crews then focus on transmission lines and substations that serve large geographic areas, followed by facilities considered critical to public health and safety, including hospitals, police and fire stations, emergency operations centers and water and wastewater systems. After that, utilities prioritize repairs that restore electricity to the largest number of customers in the shortest amount of time. Neighborhood circuits and individual service lines are generally addressed last.

This approach helps explain why residents may see nearby commercial corridors or dense urban areas regain power while their street remains dark. Restoring a single feeder or substation can bring electricity back to thousands of customers at once, while repairing damage on a local line may restore power to only a few homes. Utilities regularly cite this framework when responding to customer complaints, and EEI materials reinforce the idea that speed and system stability must guide restoration decisions.

Federal emergency doctrine aligns with that reasoning. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has warned that prolonged power outages can cascade into failures across critical systems, including healthcare, water treatment, fuel supply and communications. Under Emergency Support Function 12, the Department of Energy coordinates federal assistance related to energy restoration during major incidents that overwhelm state and local capacity. That guidance prioritizes protecting critical infrastructure and restoring service at scale rather than addressing individual household hardship first.

The structure of the electric grid itself plays a major role in who waits the longest. Rural areas are often slower to recover, not because they are explicitly deprioritized, but because of how the grid is built. Rural systems generally have more miles of overhead line serving fewer customers. That increases exposure to wind, ice and falling trees and requires more repairs per customer restored. Crews may face long travel distances, blocked roads and limited access. In contrast, dense urban systems can restore thousands of customers with a single repair.

Reliability performance is measured using standardized metrics defined by the Energy Information Administration, including SAIDI, which tracks the average number of outage minutes per customer per year, and CAIDI, which measures the average time required to restore service after a sustained outage. These metrics are widely used in regulatory oversight and utility reporting. However, they reflect systemwide averages and do not capture how hardship can be concentrated in rural or low-density communities.

Federal research has documented this disparity. A 2025 study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory examining rural Minnesota found that longer feeder lines were associated with higher outage frequency and longer restoration times during major storm years. The findings illustrate how grid design can disadvantage rural customers even when utilities follow industry standard restoration practices.

EEI’s role in this system is not to order utilities to restore one community before another, but to shape the policy environment that defines what utilities argue is reasonable. EEI coordinates lobbying on federal energy legislation, submits comments in regulatory proceedings and promotes policy frameworks utilities use in state rate cases and emergency planning. Its advocacy has coincided with several major legal and regulatory changes that directly affect consumers.

EEI publicly supported the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which expanded federal funding and incentives for grid hardening and transmission projects. While federal dollars offset some costs, utilities are generally allowed to recover remaining capital spending through customer rates over time, increasing long term rate bases.

EEI also supported clean energy tax provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act that accelerated utility owned renewable energy projects. Those projects are typically financed through regulated rates, shifting costs to customers while guaranteeing returns to shareholders, subject to state approval.

At the state level, EEI member utilities have supported regulatory changes to net metering programs that compensate homeowners for rooftop solar generation. In California and Nevada, public utility commissions adopted decisions that reduced export compensation and shifted toward net billing structures. Utilities argued earlier policies shifted grid costs to non solar customers. Consumer advocates countered that the changes increased barriers to customer owned energy and limited household energy independence. The legally binding outcomes are documented in commission decisions and dockets.

EEI member companies have also supported legislation limiting financial liability for utility caused disasters. In California, following catastrophic wildfires linked to utility equipment, lawmakers enacted a law creating a wildfire insurance fund and altering how liability costs could be recovered. Utilities argued that unlimited exposure threatened grid stability. Consumer advocates warned the changes reduced accountability and allowed costs to be passed on to ratepayers through future rates.

Oversight of the electric system remains fragmented. States regulate local utilities, while federal agencies address bulk power reliability, emergency coordination and national resilience planning. The Government Accountability Office has warned that climate related risks to the grid are increasing and that responsibility for addressing those risks is spread across multiple agencies, complicating accountability.

In that environment, EEI’s power is not formal authority but sustained influence. By coordinating industry positions and maintaining access to policymakers, EEI helps shape the laws, regulations and narratives that define how utilities operate, how much consumers pay and how outages are managed.

For consumers, the impact is indirect but tangible. EEI does not decide whose lights come back on first, but its frameworks define what utilities argue is fair and efficient. It does not set rates, but it supports policies that allow billions of dollars in infrastructure costs to be recovered through monthly bills. And while it does not regulate the grid, it influences how failures are explained and which reforms gain traction afterward.

For rural communities and households that wait longest in the dark, those decisions can feel distant and inevitable. Understanding the role EEI plays helps explain why the system prioritizes speed and scale over equity, and why the people most affected by outages often have the least voice when the rules are written.

Links Sources

Edison Electric Institute official overview and policy materialshttps://www.eei.org/en/about-eei/abouthttps://www.eei.org/en/issues-and-policy/reliability-emergency-response

Federal Emergency Management Agency Power Outage Incident Annexhttps://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/documents/fema_incident-annex_power-outage.pdf

Federal Emergency Management Agency Emergency Support Function 12 Energy Annexhttps://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/2020-07/fema_ESF_12_Energy-Annex.pdf

U.S. Energy Information Administration reliability metricshttps://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_11_01.html

National Renewable Energy Laboratory rural outage studyhttps://docs.nrel.gov/docs/fy26osti/92973.pdf

Government Accountability Office electricity grid resilience report GAO 21 346https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-21-346.pdf

Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act Public Law 117 58https://www.congress.gov/117/plaws/publ58/PLAW-117publ58.pdf

Inflation Reduction Act Public Law 117 169https://www.congress.gov/117/plaws/publ169/PLAW-117publ169.pdf

California Public Utilities Commission Decision D 22 12 056https://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Published/G000/M499/K921/499921246.PDF

Nevada Public Utilities Commission net metering documentationhttps://puc.nv.gov/uploadedfiles/pucnvgov/content/consumers/be_informed/fact_sheet_net_metering.pdf