In an article about an aging power grid, Popular Science interviewed Sayanti Mukherjee, assistant professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. The U.S. Energy Administration reports that in 2016, the average utility customer had 1.3 power interruptions, and their total blackout time averaged four hours. The reason these estimates vary may be related in part to the fact that private utilities tend to be guarded about sharing data, according to Mukherjee.