County annual report · FIPS 37111
2017 McDowell County, NC Power Outage Report
In 2017, customers in McDowell County, NC went without power for an average of 18.7 hours, a total of 233K customer-hours (North Carolina average 10.0 hours). That ranks 24th worst of 94 North Carolina counties and 297th of 2,786 nationally.
Compared with NC, the US and 2016
Coverage line is EAGLE-I's share of North Carolina customers tracked each year.
Biggest outages in McDowell County, 2017
The 10 outage episodes with the most customers out at once. Times are UTC.
| # | Started (UTC) | Ended (UTC) | Duration | Peak out | Customer-hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | May 13, 2017 05:45 | May 13, 2017 18:15 | 12h 30m | 2,946 | 35K |
| 2 | December 8, 2017 17:15 | December 11, 2017 20:30 | 3d 3h | 2,716 | 65K |
| 3 | October 23, 2017 17:45 | October 24, 2017 23:15 | 1d 5h | 1,816 | 22K |
| 4 | May 24, 2017 03:15 | May 24, 2017 18:15 | 15h | 1,558 | 15K |
| 5 | March 2, 2017 03:15 | March 3, 2017 00:30 | 21h 15m | 1,381 | 5,016 |
| 6 | October 23, 2017 13:15 | October 23, 2017 16:45 | 3h 30m | 1,309 | 2,639 |
| 7 | June 17, 2017 08:45 | June 17, 2017 15:45 | 7h | 1,231 | 3,905 |
| 8 | March 16, 2017 12:30 | March 16, 2017 14:15 | 1h 45m | 1,177 | 1,445 |
| 9 | July 30, 2017 01:45 | July 30, 2017 08:15 | 6h 30m | 939 | 2,527 |
| 10 | April 10, 2017 12:00 | April 10, 2017 13:45 | 1h 45m | 862 | 657 |
Outage episodes by size in 2017: 47 reached 100+ customers, 8 reached 1,000+ customers, 0 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 McDowell County reported on EIA Form 861 for 2017, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Duke Energy Progress - (NC) | 2017 | 3.2 hrs | 1.52 | 2.7 hrs | 1.47 |
| Duke Energy Carolinas, LLC | 2017 | 8.8 hrs | 1.52 | 3.1 hrs | 1.11 |
| Rutherford Elec Member Corp | 2017 | 3.3 hrs | 1.59 | 72 min | 1.09 |
| Duke Energy | - | - | - | - | - |
| French Broad Elec Member Corp | - | - | - | - | - |
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 2017; utilities it does not see are not counted.
- Hours per customer = outage customer-minutes ÷ 12,442 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. McDowell County has data for 2015–2025.
Cite this report
MassOutage (massoutage.com), McDowell County, NC annual power outage report, 2017, 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/2017/north-carolina/mcdowell-county