The System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI)[1] is commonly used as a reliability index by electric power utilities. SAIDI is the average cumulative outage duration for each customer served, and is calculated as:
where is the number of customers and is the annual outage time for location , and is the total number of customers served. In other words,
SAIDI is measured in units of time, often minutes or hours; it is usually measured over the course of a year. According to IEEE Standard 1366-1998, the median value for North American utilities is approximately 1.50 hours. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration Annual Electric Power Industry Report, it is 2.0 hours, rising to the range of 3.5 to 8 hours, when "major events" are included.[2]