County annual report · FIPS 37189
2018 Watauga County, NC Power Outage Report
In 2018, customers in Watauga County, NC went without power for an average of 4.7 hours, a total of 85K customer-hours (North Carolina average 55.2 hours). That ranks 78th worst of 94 North Carolina counties and 1111th 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 Watauga 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 | November 15, 2018 10:15 | November 16, 2018 23:45 | 1d 13h | 5,519 | 15K |
| 2 | March 2, 2018 00:30 | March 3, 2018 05:45 | 1d 5h | 5,195 | 24K |
| 3 | September 16, 2018 22:30 | September 17, 2018 02:30 | 4h | 1,968 | 2,512 |
| 4 | October 21, 2018 02:00 | October 21, 2018 22:45 | 20h 45m | 1,882 | 5,212 |
| 5 | March 22, 2018 06:15 | March 22, 2018 07:30 | 1h 15m | 1,738 | 2,173 |
| 6 | November 17, 2018 03:00 | November 17, 2018 16:30 | 13h 30m | 1,343 | 1,660 |
| 7 | April 5, 2018 05:00 | April 5, 2018 06:00 | 1h | 1,316 | 987 |
| 8 | September 16, 2018 08:30 | September 16, 2018 21:30 | 13h | 1,025 | 3,213 |
| 9 | November 7, 2018 14:00 | November 7, 2018 14:15 | 15m | 1,015 | 254 |
| 10 | March 14, 2018 19:30 | March 14, 2018 20:30 | 1h | 968 | 713 |
Outage episodes by size in 2018: 41 reached 100+ customers, 9 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 Watauga 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blue Ridge Elec Member Corp - (NC) | 2018 | 5.7 hrs | 1.87 | 76 min | 0.96 |
| New River Light & Power Co | 2018 | 19 min | 0.27 | 19 min | 0.27 |
| 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 82% of North Carolina's customers in 2018; 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, 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/watauga-county