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Austin Utilities has received national recognition for achieving exceptional electric reliability in 2021.

The recognition comes from the American Public Power Association (APPA), a trade group that represents more than 2,000 not-for-profit, community-owned electric utilities.

APPA helps electric utilities track power outage and restoration data through its subscription-based eReliability Tracker service. Once per year, APPA’s Reliability Team compares this data to national statistics tracked by the U.S. Energy Information Administration for all types of electric utilities.

“Once again, public power utilities have demonstrated their commitment to providing highly reliable power to their customers.” said Alex Hofmann, APPA’s Vice President of Technical and Operations Services. “We commend these utilities for their hard work when it comes to keeping the lights on in their communities.”

Nationwide, the average public power customer has their lights out for less than half the amount of time that customers of other types of utilities do.

“We are proud to receive this recognition. It is a testament to the hard work of all our staff to ensure that we keep Austin powered,” said Bill Bumgarner, electric supervisor at Austin Utilities, “Keeping the power on is the most important thing we do every day.”

A focus on undergrounding hard to reach areas and locations with heavy tree growth, practicing prompt maintenance of our overhead system before it becomes a problem, and adding redundancy in critical areas of our system are all part of our work to minimize outages.