County annual report · FIPS 37111
2018 McDowell County, NC Power Outage Report
In 2018, customers in McDowell County, NC went without power for an average of 14.7 hours, a total of 183K customer-hours (North Carolina average 55.2 hours). That ranks 58th worst of 94 North Carolina counties and 378th of 2,798 nationally.
Compared with NC, the US and 2017
Coverage line is EAGLE-I's share of North Carolina customers tracked each year.
Biggest outages in McDowell County, 2018
The 10 outage episodes with the most customers out at once. Times are UTC.
| # | Started (UTC) | Ended (UTC) | Duration | Peak out | Customer-hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | December 9, 2018 06:45 | December 12, 2018 04:15 | 2d 21h | 1,671 | 61K |
| 2 | April 23, 2018 22:15 | April 24, 2018 17:15 | 19h | 1,259 | 3,473 |
| 3 | May 29, 2018 19:45 | June 1, 2018 08:45 | 2d 13h | 1,255 | 30K |
| 4 | August 26, 2018 01:15 | August 27, 2018 02:30 | 1d 1h | 1,234 | 2,268 |
| 5 | October 10, 2018 20:15 | October 12, 2018 22:30 | 2d 2h | 1,163 | 7,028 |
| 6 | July 21, 2018 04:30 | July 21, 2018 11:15 | 6h 45m | 1,076 | 1,680 |
| 7 | May 17, 2018 21:15 | May 18, 2018 13:30 | 16h 15m | 1,054 | 1,957 |
| 8 | September 20, 2018 18:45 | September 21, 2018 00:15 | 5h 30m | 1,042 | 1,519 |
| 9 | September 16, 2018 09:45 | September 17, 2018 22:30 | 1d 12h | 990 | 5,135 |
| 10 | July 2, 2018 00:15 | July 2, 2018 08:00 | 7h 45m | 890 | 4,335 |
Outage episodes by size in 2018: 51 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 2018, 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) | 2018 | 43.0 hrs | 2.71 | 2.6 hrs | 1.33 |
| Duke Energy Carolinas, LLC | 2018 | 13.1 hrs | 1.81 | 3.7 hrs | 1.19 |
| Rutherford Elec Member Corp | 2018 | 6.8 hrs | 1.63 | 1.9 hrs | 0.82 |
| 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 82% of North Carolina's customers in 2018; 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, 2018, 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/2018/north-carolina/mcdowell-county