County annual report · FIPS 37047
2020 Columbus County, NC Power Outage Report
In 2020, customers in Columbus County, NC went without power for an average of 6.8 hours, a total of 155K customer-hours (North Carolina average 20.3 hours). That ranks 76th worst of 94 North Carolina counties and 1112th of 3,019 nationally.
Compared with NC, the US and 2019
Coverage line is EAGLE-I's share of North Carolina customers tracked each year.
Biggest outages in Columbus County, 2020
The 10 outage episodes with the most customers out at once. Times are UTC.
| # | Started (UTC) | Ended (UTC) | Duration | Peak out | Customer-hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | April 13, 2020 08:45 | April 14, 2020 00:00 | 15h 15m | 8,768 | 21K |
| 2 | August 4, 2020 00:45 | August 6, 2020 01:30 | 2d | 7,803 | 95K |
| 3 | February 6, 2020 15:00 | February 7, 2020 04:45 | 13h 45m | 2,448 | 3,678 |
| 4 | December 25, 2020 02:15 | December 25, 2020 06:45 | 4h 30m | 1,552 | 1,603 |
| 5 | July 29, 2020 19:45 | July 30, 2020 00:15 | 4h 30m | 1,308 | 2,619 |
| 6 | April 14, 2020 20:45 | April 14, 2020 22:30 | 1h 45m | 1,262 | 344 |
| 7 | February 29, 2020 18:30 | February 29, 2020 21:15 | 2h 45m | 924 | 518 |
| 8 | September 5, 2020 16:45 | September 5, 2020 19:15 | 2h 30m | 863 | 1,441 |
| 9 | October 11, 2020 22:00 | October 11, 2020 23:00 | 1h | 672 | 504 |
| 10 | April 24, 2020 06:00 | April 24, 2020 06:45 | 45m | 671 | 336 |
Outage episodes by size in 2020: 46 reached 100+ customers, 6 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 Columbus County reported on EIA Form 861 for 2020, 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) | 2020 | 5.2 hrs | 1.81 | 2.3 hrs | 1.37 |
| Brunswick Electric Member Corp | 2020 | 10.7 hrs | 1.61 | 40 min | 0.57 |
| Duke Energy | - | - | - | - | - |
| Four County 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 91% of North Carolina's customers in 2020; utilities it does not see are not counted.
- Hours per customer = outage customer-minutes ÷ 22,736 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. Columbus County has data for 2015–2025.
Cite this report
MassOutage (massoutage.com), Columbus County, NC annual power outage report, 2020, 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/2020/north-carolina/columbus-county