County annual report · FIPS 37189
2016 Watauga County, NC Power Outage Report
In 2016, customers in Watauga County, NC went without power for an average of 11.3 hours, a total of 205K customer-hours (North Carolina average 30.5 hours). That ranks 58th worst of 93 North Carolina counties and 308th of 2,391 nationally.
Compared with NC, the US and 2015
Coverage line is EAGLE-I's share of North Carolina customers tracked each year.
Biggest outages in Watauga County, 2016
The 10 outage episodes with the most customers out at once. Times are UTC.
| # | Started (UTC) | Ended (UTC) | Duration | Peak out | Customer-hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | July 8, 2016 22:45 | July 12, 2016 00:15 | 3d 1h | 11,689 | 167K |
| 2 | October 20, 2016 00:30 | October 20, 2016 03:00 | 2h 30m | 3,972 | 1,632 |
| 3 | April 3, 2016 02:00 | April 3, 2016 18:45 | 16h 45m | 2,810 | 2,863 |
| 4 | September 29, 2016 15:45 | September 29, 2016 16:30 | 45m | 1,420 | 837 |
| 5 | November 19, 2016 16:45 | November 19, 2016 18:30 | 1h 45m | 1,177 | 1,137 |
| 6 | October 4, 2016 20:45 | October 4, 2016 21:45 | 1h | 1,024 | 257 |
| 7 | January 23, 2016 22:15 | January 24, 2016 02:00 | 3h 45m | 972 | 556 |
| 8 | February 3, 2016 07:00 | February 3, 2016 15:15 | 8h 15m | 971 | 2,885 |
| 9 | August 5, 2016 09:15 | August 5, 2016 18:00 | 8h 45m | 931 | 1,345 |
| 10 | August 21, 2016 00:30 | August 21, 2016 03:30 | 3h | 719 | 1,355 |
Outage episodes by size in 2016: 48 reached 100+ customers, 6 reached 1,000+ customers, 1 reached 10,000+ customers.
Utility reliability filed with the EIA
SAIDI (average outage time per customer) and SAIFI (average interruptions per customer) that utilities serving Watauga County reported on EIA Form 861 for 2016, or their most recent earlier filing. Utility-wide figures, not county-specific.
| Utility | EIA year | SAIDI | SAIFI | SAIDI excl. major events | SAIFI excl. major events |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blue Ridge Elec Member Corp - (NC) | 2016 | 4.9 hrs | 1.60 | 84 min | 1.10 |
| New River Light & Power Co | 2016 | 16 min | 0.10 | 16 min | 0.10 |
| Mountain Electric Coop, Inc | - | - | - | - | - |
About this data
- Outage figures come from DOE/ORNL EAGLE-I, which records customers out by county every 15 minutes. EAGLE-I tracked about n/a of North Carolina's customers in 2016; utilities it does not see are not counted.
- Hours per customer = outage customer-minutes ÷ 18,248 customers (ORNL modeled county customer count), including major storm days. It is comparable across counties but is not the SAIDI a utility files.
- An outage event is a continuous stretch with customers out; counts at 100, 1,000 and 10,000+ use its peak.
- Years loaded: 2015–2025. Watauga County has data for 2015–2025.
Cite this report
MassOutage (massoutage.com), Watauga County, NC annual power outage report, 2016, data as of Oct 3, 2026 02:41 UTC, sources: DOE EAGLE-I (https://eagle-i.doe.gov/); EAGLE-I modeled customer counts (MCC) (https://figshare.com/); EIA Form 861 (utility reliability) (https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/eia861/). https://massoutage.com/reports/2016/north-carolina/watauga-county