Not all outages are measured with the same yardstick: regulations require that utilities count, and report, outages that occur during major storms separately from outages that occur outside major storms. That gives a clearer picture of what outage norms are like, both during storms and outside storms.
“Major storm” is a category with specific criteria. One criterion for major storm is outage length, so when a utility restores power quickly, it can have the impact of lowering its number of major storms, and raising the number of “everyday” outages. That’s what happened last year.
In 2024, WEC saw a sharp increase in non-major-storm outages—more than a hundred more than in 2023. That also means WEC members experienced more than 56,000 non-major-storm hours without power than the previous year.
But let’s dig deeper: Dave Kresock, WEC’s Director of Operations and Engineering, observed that only three 2024 storms met major storm criteria. However, WEC counted a full seven additional severe weather events throughout the year that caused significant grid damage and outages—including the storm that caused catastrophic flooding on July 10, exactly a year after flooding in 2023.
Kresock reported: “It was because the WEC team was able to restore power to our members so quickly, many of these severe weather events did not qualify as major storms. This forced the outage data, particularly tree outages, to substantially increase in both the number of outages and the member hours out.”
As in previous years, trees and weather were the main causes of WEC outages in 2024. Trees caused a whopping 55% of outages, even as more than a thousand more “danger trees” were removed in 2024 than the previous year.
In 2025, Kresock noted, WEC has contracted to trial new Right-of-Way software. Using satellite imagery, artificial intelligence, outage data, and other factors, the software assesses vegetation growth over 250 miles of Right-of-Way and will create a vegetation cutting plan. If the pilot is successful, the software could be applied system-wide to improve reliability, according to Kresock. And as a reminder, all that vegetation is cut by hand: WEC does not use herbicides to control vegetation growth in rights-of-way.
11,579
Average number of WEC member households in 2024
2,728
Approximate number of square miles in WEC service territory
906
Separate outages on WEC’s system in 2024, not including major storms
776
The rolling average annual number of separate outages over the last 10 years, not including major storms
159,960
Number of WEC consumer hours out in 2024, not including major storms
97,802
The rolling average annual number of consumer hours out over the last 10 years, not including major storms
3
2024 weather events that met major storm criteria: March 10, April 4, August 9
380
Additional outages caused by those three major storms
7
Number of additional severe weather events that did not qualify as major storms
55%
Percentage of 2024 outages caused by trees
5,484
Number of “danger trees” removed during 2024 maintenance clearing
51
miles of distribution line that received maintenance clearing in 2024
For updates about maintenance clearing, look for the “Where’s WEC” column in most issues of Co-op Currents or click Right-of-Way and Field Work Notices on wec.coop.