County annual report · FIPS 37111
2020 McDowell County, NC Power Outage Report
In 2020, customers in McDowell County, NC went without power for an average of 10.2 hours, a total of 127K customer-hours (North Carolina average 20.3 hours). That ranks 62nd worst of 94 North Carolina counties and 777th 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 McDowell 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 | October 29, 2020 11:15 | November 1, 2020 20:15 | 3d 9h | 3,028 | 42K |
| 2 | August 7, 2020 21:15 | August 8, 2020 16:30 | 19h 15m | 3,002 | 4,431 |
| 3 | December 2, 2020 13:15 | December 2, 2020 15:00 | 1h 45m | 1,763 | 2,205 |
| 4 | November 1, 2020 21:45 | November 3, 2020 00:15 | 1d 2h | 1,448 | 13K |
| 5 | May 21, 2020 09:00 | May 21, 2020 18:45 | 9h 45m | 1,324 | 5,019 |
| 6 | March 29, 2020 18:45 | March 30, 2020 00:15 | 5h 30m | 1,270 | 1,252 |
| 7 | May 19, 2020 07:30 | May 20, 2020 22:15 | 1d 14h | 1,263 | 3,238 |
| 8 | April 5, 2020 06:45 | April 5, 2020 07:00 | 15m | 1,220 | 305 |
| 9 | June 4, 2020 23:45 | June 5, 2020 15:45 | 16h | 1,178 | 1,929 |
| 10 | June 22, 2020 00:45 | June 22, 2020 12:00 | 11h 15m | 1,008 | 1,146 |
Outage episodes by size in 2020: 54 reached 100+ customers, 10 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 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 |
| Duke Energy Carolinas, LLC | 2020 | 11.2 hrs | 1.71 | 3.1 hrs | 1.18 |
| Rutherford Elec Member Corp | 2020 | 5.2 hrs | 1.38 | 86 min | 0.94 |
| 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 91% of North Carolina's customers in 2020; 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, 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/mcdowell-county