J.D. Power Reports Business Customer Satisfaction Challenged by Rising Costs and Increased Outages

Business customer satisfaction with U.S. electric utilities is under pressure as commercial electricity prices and outage incidents rise. The J.D. Power 2025 Electric Utility Business Customer Satisfaction Study indicates that more businesses are evaluating new rate plans in response to these trends.

“Business customers are actively shopping new rate plans, looking for ways to manage rising electricity costs and deal with growing reliability issues,” said Ramah Vaughn, director of utilities intelligence at J.D. Power. “Utilities that recognize this trend and take proactive steps to engage with their business customers and help them lower costs, as well as respond more quickly to power outages and interruptions, are able to offset the negative effects of these issues on overall customer satisfaction.”

Key findings from the 2025 study include:

Increased interest in new rate plans:
More than half (53%) of commercial electric utility customers selected a new rate plan in 2025, up from 43% in 2024. Standard utility rate plans remain the most common choice (39%), followed by specialty rate plans (20%) and real-time rate plans (19%). Specialty, interruptible, green-based, and time-based rate plans have all seen increased interest over the past four years.

Outage frequency and severity rise:
Seventy-four percent of business customers experienced a power outage in 2025, up from 73% in 2024. Outage severity also increased, with the average duration of the longest outage in the Southern region reaching 22 hours. Additionally, one-fourth (25%) of businesses reported financial losses due to an outage.

Communication linked to higher satisfaction:
While outages generally reduce satisfaction, utilities that provide frequent and proactive communication during these events see stronger results. The average safety and reliability satisfaction score is 699 (on a 1,000-point scale) among businesses receiving five or more points of contact during an outage — 210 points higher than those receiving no communication.

Study Rankings

Utilities are evaluated in four U.S. regions and grouped into large (100,000+ business customers) and midsize (50,000–99,999 business customers) segments. The highest-ranked utilities in each region for 2025 are:

• East Large: PSEG Long Island

• East Midsize: Pepco (second consecutive year)

• Midwest Large: MidAmerican Energy (third consecutive year)

• Midwest Midsize: Kentucky Utilities (second consecutive year)

• South Large: Georgia Power (second consecutive year)

• South Midsize: Entergy Texas (second consecutive year)

• West Large: SRP

• West Midsize: Seattle City Light (fourth consecutive year)

The 2025 study was redesigned, and results are not directly comparable with previous years. Now in its 27th year, the study measures satisfaction among business customers of 80 U.S. electric utilities serving more than 50,000 business customers, representing over 12 million customers nationwide.

Satisfaction is assessed across eight dimensions: total monthly cost; trust; safety and reliability; ease of doing business; people; information provided; problem resolution; and digital channels. Findings are based on 18,132 online interviews with business customers in decision-making roles, collected from February through October 2025.