Louisiana power outages in EIA data: typical interruption hours, Hurricane Ida's impact, and how Gulf Coast risk compares with Texas and Florida.
Setup Type
Quick answer: In an ordinary year, without a named storm, the average Louisiana utility customer loses power for about 3.3 to 4.4 hours total, per EIA's own state-level reliability data for 2019 through 2024. That is the weakest ordinary-year baseline of the three Gulf states this site has measured, behind Texas's 2.2 to 2.9 hours and well behind Florida's 1.1 to 1.2 hours. The number that actually matters is the storm-year number: 2021 averaged 97.8 hours per customer statewide, the worst single year this site has measured for any state, driven overwhelmingly by Hurricane Ida, and 2020 averaged 72.2 hours because three hurricanes, Laura, Delta, and Zeta, all hit Louisiana within about ten weeks. Louisiana's outage risk is not just a storm problem, it is a cluster-year problem: an active season can stack multiple landfalls in the same state in the same year, and that pattern, not the yearly average, should decide standby versus portable versus battery.
Best for
Louisiana homeowners who want real outage-frequency data before sizing a backup power budget, not a marketing claim about how exposed the Gulf Coast is.
Wrong fit
Buyers who already have their outage pattern figured out and just need cost or brand numbers. Start with the real cost or best-brand guides instead.
Tradeoff
Louisiana's ordinary-year reliability is the weakest of the Gulf trio measured here, and its storm years can stack more than one hurricane in a single season. Buying for the average year underbuilds for both problems at once.
Louisiana's grid has a double problem, not a single one. Its ordinary-year reliability, the number you get in a year with no named storm, already runs behind both Texas and Florida. Then, when a season turns active, Louisiana does not just take one hit, it can take three in ten weeks, as it did in 2020. Here is what the government's own reliability numbers show, what caused the worst years, and how to use that pattern instead of the average when you size backup power.
We don't sell generators. We save you from buying the wrong one, and in Louisiana that starts with knowing whether your risk looks like a normal year, a one-storm year, or a cluster year. For the cost side of the decision, see what a standby generator actually costs installed in Louisiana. If you have not yet picked a lane, standby vs portable vs battery walks the fit question in full.
The data: an ordinary Louisiana year vs a storm year
The U.S. Energy Information Administration collects SAIDI (System Average Interruption Duration Index, the total minutes an average customer is without power) and SAIFI (System Average Interruption Frequency Index, how many separate interruptions that customer has) from every state's utilities every year, and publishes two versions of each: one including "major event days" (named storms and other extreme events) and one excluding them. The figures below are read directly from EIA's own live table, not a secondary summary.
Year
Hours without power, all events
Hours without power, ordinary days only
Separate interruptions, all events
Separate interruptions, ordinary days only
2024
10.5
3.6
2.36
1.66
2023
11.1
3.3
1.88
1.50
2022
5.4
4.2
1.99
1.86
2021
97.8
4.4
3.36
1.78
2020
72.2
3.6
3.34
1.63
2019
8.7
3.7
2.13
1.61
The "ordinary days only" columns move in a narrower band than Texas's or Florida's, 3.3 to 4.4 hours, but that band itself sits above both of those states in every year on this table. Compare it directly: Texas's ordinary-year figure runs 2.2 to 2.9 hours and Florida's runs 1.1 to 1.2 hours across the same six years. Louisiana's background grid is simply less reliable in a normal year, storms aside. The "all events" column is where the real volatility shows up: 2021 is roughly 22 times the ordinary-year figure, and 2020 is roughly 20 times it, both landing in years when named hurricanes made landfall. 2022, the calmest storm year on this table, still ran an all-events figure only about 1.3 times the ordinary-year number, close to what a no-storm year should look like.
One honest gap in this table: 2023's all-events figure (11.1 hours) is actually higher than 2024's (10.5 hours), even though no named hurricane made landfall in Louisiana in 2023. EIA's "major event days" category covers any IEEE-threshold extreme weather day, not hurricanes specifically, and we could not identify a single named storm or widely reported event responsible for 2023's spike. That gap is disclosed below rather than assigned to a cause we could not verify.
Suggested citation: Generator Guide, "How Often Does the Power Go Out in Louisiana?," EIA SAIDI/SAIFI analysis 2019-2024, checked October 14, 2026.
What actually caused the bad years
Five named storms made landfall in or materially affected Louisiana between 2019 and 2024. Each entry below is sourced to its own primary report, either NOAA's National Hurricane Center or the dominant Louisiana utility's own restoration release, and the scope of each outage figure (Louisiana-only, or combined with a neighboring state) is stated explicitly because the primary sources do not all report the same way.
Storm
Landfall
Peak power impact
Deaths (Louisiana)
Hurricane Barry
July 13, 2019, Cat 1, near Pecan Island
NHC's own report: more than 300,000 people without power statewide, mostly a rainfall and flood event (23.58 inches near Ragley) rather than a wind-damage event
0, per NHC
Hurricane Laura
Aug 27, 2020, Cat 4, near Cameron
NHC's combined Louisiana-and-Texas figure: about 568,000 power outages. Entergy's own system-wide figure, also combined across both states: roughly 600,000 outages at peak and more than 900,000 customers impacted in total, with Entergy stating most of the restoration cost, $1.25 billion to $1.4 billion, fell on its Louisiana operating company versus $230 million to $260 million in Texas
Entergy Louisiana's own figure: more than 320,000 outages, with 96 percent of customers restored within four days
0 direct, 2 indirect (electrocution or fire during storm prep or cleanup)
Hurricane Zeta
Oct 28, 2020, Cat 3 per NHC's post-storm analysis, near Cocodrie
NHC's Louisiana-specific figure: about one-half million customers lost power at some point during the storm. Entergy's restoration update shows 73 percent restored by the morning of Nov 1, with a handful of parishes (Lafourche, Jefferson, Terrebonne, Plaquemines) not fully restored until the week of Nov 9
0 direct, 1 indirect (electrocution from a downed power line in New Orleans)
Hurricane Ida
Aug 29, 2021, Cat 4, Port Fourchon
EIA's own reporting: more than 1 million customer outages initially across Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama combined, with about half a million Louisiana customers still without power as of Sept 7 and 85 percent of Louisiana customers restored by Sept 13. Entergy's system-wide figure (Louisiana and Mississippi combined): 948,000 outages at peak, 98 percent restored by Sept 21
4 direct (2 drownings, 2 wind-related building collapses), 26 indirect (13 heat-exhaustion deaths during the outage, 5 nursing-home evacuee deaths, 6 carbon monoxide poisoning, 1 roof-repair fall, 1 alligator attack)
Hurricane Francine
Sept 11, 2024, Cat 2, near Morgan City
Entergy Louisiana's own figure: more than 300,000 customers lost power, with 90 percent restored within three days and virtually all restorable customers back by Sept 17, about six days after landfall
0, per NHC
Read down that table and the 2020 and 2021 spikes in the EIA data stop being abstract: three hurricanes hit Louisiana in the ten weeks between Laura's August 27 landfall and Zeta's October 28 landfall, all in the same calendar year, and Hurricane Ida alone produced the single worst year in this site's outage-data series for any state measured so far. None of these figures use a single statewide tracker number; where a source reported a combined, multi-state figure rather than a Louisiana-only count, that scope is stated rather than quietly narrowed.
Why Louisiana's grid responds differently than Texas's and Florida's
Louisiana sits inside the Eastern Interconnection, the same major US grid Florida belongs to, geographically distinct from Texas's self-contained ERCOT grid. Entergy Corporation's own SEC filings state plainly that its utility operating companies, including Entergy Louisiana, "are members of the SERC Reliability Corporation (SERC), the Regional Entity with delegated authority from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) for the purpose of proposing and enforcing Bulk Electric System reliability standards within 16 central and southeastern states." That is a different reliability coordinator than Florida's FRCC, but the same practical benefit Florida has over Texas: membership in a shared interconnection makes it easier to bring in mutual-aid repair crews from other states after a storm, something Texas's isolated ERCOT grid cannot casually do in a systemwide emergency.
Louisiana does not regulate storm hardening through one numbered rule the way Florida does with Florida Administrative Code 25-6.030. Instead, the Louisiana Public Service Commission opened Docket No. R-36227 on December 22, 2021, an "assessment of Louisiana's current electric utility infrastructure for resilience and hardening for future storm events," per the docket's own public record. That docket led individual Louisiana utilities, including Entergy Louisiana and Cleco Power, to file their own grid resilience plans with the commission rather than complying with a single statewide hardening code. That is a real, case-by-case regulatory process, not a marketing claim, but we could not independently confirm the specific dollar figures reported for those utility-level plans against a readable primary filing this run, so none are quoted here.
Neither structure stops a hurricane from knocking down a line. What they change is how fast the lights come back on, and how deep an individual utility has to invest to prevent the damage in the first place, a distribution and restoration question rather than the generation-shortage question that caused Winter Storm Uri in Texas.
What this means for your generator choice
Match the machine to the pattern that actually applies to you, not to the worst year on record or the calmest one.
If your household experiences the ordinary-year pattern (closer to the 3.3 to 4.4 hour, roughly two-interruption baseline above), a portable generator with a permitted interlock is usually the proportionate answer, and considerably cheaper to own. See interlock kit vs transfer switch for the legal, permitted way to connect one, and confirm the carbon monoxide alarm requirement that comes with any outdoor fuel-fired appliance under Louisiana's building code, covered in the Louisiana installed-cost breakdown.
If you live anywhere in Louisiana's hurricane corridor, the real risk is not a single bad storm, it is the active-season cluster: 2020 put three hurricanes into the state in ten weeks, and Ida alone kept some Louisiana customers without power for more than two weeks. That multi-week, whole-region pattern, more than any single-storm severity rating, is the honest case for a standby system with automatic switchover. Budget the full installed project, not the machine sticker, in the real cost of a whole-house generator or the Louisiana-specific number linked above.
If your outages are short even in a bad year, a home battery can be the lower-hassle, silent option. See the honest tradeoff in generator vs home battery.
Whatever you run during a storm, carbon monoxide risk rises every hurricane season as outages stretch past a day, and Louisiana's own building code requires a CO alarm in every sleeping room and living area once a generator is installed. Read never run a generator indoors before the next storm, not during it, and work through the hurricane season generator prep checklist before June.
Frequently Asked Questions
How often does the power go out in Louisiana?
In a year without a major named storm, an average Louisiana utility customer loses power for about 3.3 to 4.4 hours total, per EIA's own state reliability data for 2019 through 2024. That is a weaker ordinary-year baseline than either Texas (2.2 to 2.9 hours) or Florida (1.1 to 1.2 hours). The real variable is whether, and how many times, a named storm hits in a given season: 2021 reached 97.8 hours statewide because of Hurricane Ida alone, and 2020 reached 72.2 hours because three separate hurricanes, Laura, Delta, and Zeta, all made landfall within about ten weeks.
Why did Louisiana have three hurricanes in one year in 2020?
Louisiana's position on the Gulf Coast puts it in the path of any storm that tracks through the central or western Gulf of Mexico, and 2020 was a record-setting Atlantic hurricane season with 30 named storms overall. Laura (Aug 27), Delta (Oct 9), and Zeta (Oct 28) each took a similar track into Louisiana's coastline within a ten-week window. That clustering is a season-level weather pattern, not a grid defect, but it is exactly the scenario that turns a single hurricane's worth of generator and fuel planning into a multi-event season.
Is the Louisiana power grid getting more reliable?
The evidence is mixed. Louisiana's ordinary-year SAIDI has stayed in a narrow 3.3 to 4.4 hour band across all six years measured, with no clear improving or worsening trend yet visible in the EIA data. Since December 2021, the Louisiana Public Service Commission has run Docket No. R-36227, an infrastructure resilience and hardening assessment that has since produced utility-specific grid resilience plans from Entergy Louisiana and Cleco Power. Whether that process measurably shortens restoration times after the next major hurricane is a regulatory change still working through the system, not yet an outcome visible in the outage numbers above.
Should I buy a standby generator just because of Hurricane Ida?
Ida is the right reason to take Louisiana's outage risk seriously, but not automatically the reason to buy standby specifically. If your household's actual pattern looks like the ordinary-year data, a handful of short outages most years, a portable generator with a permitted interlock covers that pattern for a fraction of a standby project's cost. Standby earns its price when your realistic pattern includes the multi-week, whole-region outages that Ida produced, and when your location sits in a corridor exposed to more than one hurricane in an active season, which 2020 showed can happen in the same year.
What we could not verify
Louisiana-only peak outage counts for Hurricane Laura and Hurricane Zeta. The widely circulated "270,900" figure for Laura and "481,268" figure for Zeta trace to secondary aggregation of Entergy data, not a primary document we could open directly, so this guide uses NHC's own combined or Louisiana-specific figures instead, with their scope stated.
A single statewide peak-outage figure for Hurricane Ida. The commonly repeated "roughly 1 million Louisiana customers" figure traces to a third-party outage tracker cited in news coverage, not a Louisiana Public Service Commission document. The LPSC's own Hurricane Ida information page links out to individual utility materials rather than stating a standalone statewide number itself, so this guide uses EIA's own figure (about half a million Louisiana customers still without power as of Sept 7, 2021) instead.
Specific dollar figures for Entergy Louisiana's and Cleco Power's utility-level grid resilience plans. Both utilities have filed resilience and hardening plans with the Louisiana Public Service Commission under Docket No. R-36227, confirmed from the docket's own public record, but we could not independently read the plans' dollar figures from a document that rendered as readable text this run, so none are quoted here.
The cause of 2023's all-events SAIDI spike. No named hurricane made landfall in Louisiana in 2023, yet that year's all-events figure (11.1 hours) exceeds 2024's (10.5 hours). EIA's major-event-day category covers non-hurricane extreme weather as well, and we could not identify the specific event responsible.
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