Hawaii ranks number one in most reliable utility services in the nation

HONOLULU (KHON2) — A brand new study has found that Hawaii is the most reliable in electric and public water utilities.

In a study done by UtilityRates.com, an electricity and natural gas rate comparison website, Hawaii was identified as the U.S. state with the most reliable utility services.

To gather the data, researchers analyzed water quality from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and power outage statistics from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The findings were used to create scores out of 100 for each state, with a higher score indicating less reliability.

Rank State Score (out of 100)
1 Hawaii 6.09
2 Delaware 18.28
3 Maryland 24.93
4 Rhode Island 25.76
5 New York 28.86
States with the most reliable electric and public water utilities

The ranking found Hawaii to have the most reliable electric and public water utilities, with Hawaii only reporting two water violations across 139 public water systems in 2023, none of which were health-related.

Get Hawaii’s latest morning news delivered to your inbox, sign up for News 2 You

Hawaii residents also saw minimal power outages, averaging just 4.15 hours for the whole year.

Rank State Score (out of 100)
1 Texas 89.28
2 Oklahoma 83.65
3 Louisiana 74.85
4 West Virginia 71.26
5 Arkansas 70.99
6 Indiana 70.54
7 Florida 67.58
8 Kentucky 67.34
9 Maine 67.18
10 New Mexico 65.89
States with the most unreliable electric and public water utilities

Texas was found to have the highest score, ranking number one in the most unreliable electric and water utilities.

In 2023, the state reported 15,340 water system violations, with residents going without power for about 584 hours over the year, which is about 24 days without electricity

“This study shows just how wide the gap is when it comes to electric and public water utility reliability across the U.S.,” said Karl Trollinger, CEO of UtilityRates.com. In some places, like Texas, people are dealing with power outages much more often, while in Hawaii, outages are rare.”

All data was provided by UtilityRates.com.