The beginning of 2025 kicked off with heavy snow and blizzard conditions, resulting in a historically cold and icy January. Even warmer regions of the country have experienced rare snowfall in their areas, with snow dusting the beaches of the Gulf Coast and ice building up in southeastern states like Georgia and Alabama. Like most regions in the nation, Indiana experienced a frigid January as well.

During winter storms, families rely on their electric utility to keep warm, stay safe, cook meals, and access crucial information and weather updates. Businesses and vital facilities, such as hospitals and emergency service stations, depend on power to protect their communities. As temperatures plummeted in early January throughout Indiana, several utilities faced outages and power interruptions. However, the municipally-owned utilities across the state fared particularly well, due to their utilities’ consistent focus on building resilient systems and fast response times. After heavy snowfall on January 5, one municipality reported that though they experienced an outage during the storm, they were able to bring all customers online within 2 hours. Most of Indiana’s public power communities experienced the same – through this storm, there were only minimal power interruptions with no need for mutual aid coordination.

This trend plays out on a national scale year-round. The 2024 Public Power Statistical Report, put together by the American Public Power Association, states that “public power utilities on average resolve outages 52% quicker than other utilities and 41% quicker than other utilities on average following a major event.” The report showed that during major events, public power customers get power back an average of three hours sooner than customers of other utilities. Those three hours can be vital to communities, allowing hospitals to operate life-sustaining technology, businesses to bring large equipment back online, and families to keep their homes warm and food safe from spoilage.

Public power utilities tend to be more reliable than other types of utilities because of their community focus. Local leaders who direct the funds of these utilities prioritize local investment in the community, meaning that building a reliable electric infrastructure always remains a prime concern. Due to their not-for-profit business structure, public power utilities invest every dollar that customers pay back into the utility, rather than divvying out profits to shareholders. This means that public power utilities often invest more readily in system upgrades and preventive maintenance, contributing to stable service. Additionally, the lineworkers that go out to restore power when a significant outage occurs are either members of the community themselves or are a part of dedicated services for the local community. When working, most of these linemen are bringing power back to their own neighbors, friends, community members, and families. This connection to their community that all public power staff have leads to more compassionate work and a focus on efficiency.

Public power communities in general enjoy these reliability benefits, but the 61 members of the Indiana Municipal Power Agency (IMPA) receive even more. IMPA and its operations subsidiary, the IMPA Service Corp, work to bring system upgrades and maintenance to communities at a cost-effective rate. Through January’s storms, IMPA’s members realized the advantage of their collective efforts to fortify all member systems with minimal power issues through the windy, icy, snowy weather.

Since we always expect our electricity to be there in times of need, it often isn’t celebrated enough when utilities remain online through difficult times. However, this month was a resounding success for public power utilities, as their communities stayed powered through the harshest winter conditions in years.