Lexington residents familiar with Concord, Belmont and other munis generally report fewer outages than in Lexington.
In the 1997 April Fools snowstorm, the Belmont muni had restored service to all its customers while NStar was still seeking assistance from neighboring utilities.
For the 10-year period 1991-2000, the Massachusetts munis that participated in the APPA reliability survey reported 40% fewer outage minutes for the average customer than NStar.
Customer-satisfaction surveys consistently rate munis above IOUs, for example, the nationwide RKS Emergency Response Benchmark Survey (October 2000-March 2001):
In 2006, Massachusetts IOUs ranked at the bottom in JD Power’s nationwide satisfaction surveys (residential and business customers combined):
In central Massachusetts, munis restored power faster than Unitil after the massive December 2008 ice storm.
In 2011, after tropical storm Irene and “Snowtober” hit, munis restored power faster than NStar and National Grid.