Multnomah County power outages
Portland power outage map and updates
Power out in Portland? Open your utility's live outage map first, then see what causes outages here and how to keep the lights on next time.
- Served by PGE
- About 20 hrs of essentials on one battery
- Official utility maps only
Live outage maps
Who provides power in Portland?
Portland is served by PGE, the largest utility in Oregon. Outages here are usually winter events: ice storms and east-wind days that bring down tree limbs across residential streets in Northeast, Southeast and the West Hills.
We link straight to each utility's official map, because outage data changes by the minute. Not sure which utility you have? It's printed on your bill.
Investor-owned utility
Portland General Electric / PGE
Outage risk
Why Portland loses power
The storms and grid conditions behind most outages in the Portland Metro, and what they mean for backup power at home.
Ice storms and east winds
Freezing rain coats trees and lines, and cold east winds out of the Columbia Gorge bring them down. The worst metro outages of the last decade were winter ice storms, not summer heat.
Wildfire shutoffs at the edges
PGE keeps the option of Public Safety Power Shutoffs in its high fire-risk zones, which include foothill and forested areas around the metro. Homes near the Gorge, the Mt. Hood corridor and the West Hills are the most exposed.
Tree-lined neighborhoods
Mature Douglas firs are part of the appeal of the metro, and also the main reason a windstorm turns into a multi-day outage on residential streets.
Outage history
Recent major outages
The biggest recent outages in and around Portland, as reported by the utilities themselves.
February 2021
A series of ice storms knocked out power to 421,649 PGE customers in total, with more than 288,000 out at the peak. PGE called it one of the largest prolonged outages in its history.
Source: Portland General Electric
January 2024
An ice storm left about 167,000 PGE customers without power at the peak, some for several days.
Source: Portland General Electric
Backup power
How long a battery lasts in Portland
Grid-tied solar shuts off during an outage. A home battery keeps your essentials running automatically, with no fuel and no noise, and solar recharges it every day the grid is down.
- Essentials on one battery
- ~20 hrs
- Solar recharge, December
- 8.1 kWh/day
- Solar recharge, July
- 36.1 kWh/day
Assumes a 10 kWh battery, essentials averaging 0.5 kW (refrigerator, lights, internet, furnace fan, phones) and a 7 kW array, using NREL PVWatts production data for Portland. In December, solar covers about 68% of a day of essentials, so winter outages lean on the battery.
Already have solar?
Add a battery to the system you have
We add batteries to existing solar, including systems installed by other companies or by installers that are no longer in business. We check your inverter and electrical panel, then size a battery for the circuits you care about most.
PGE customers can enroll in PGE's Smart Battery program, which pays you to share your battery during peak events.
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Hundreds of 5-star reviews from Bend to the coast, from customers who chose a local team they can still call years after installation.
Portland power outage questions
Straight answers from the local team.