County annual report · FIPS 37021
2021 Buncombe County, NC Power Outage Report
In 2021, customers in Buncombe County, NC went without power for an average of 17.8 hours, a total of 578K customer-hours (North Carolina average 10.3 hours). That ranks 22nd worst of 94 North Carolina counties and 479th of 2,974 nationally.
Compared with NC, the US and 2020
Coverage line is EAGLE-I's share of North Carolina customers tracked each year.
Biggest outages in Buncombe County, 2021
The 10 outage episodes with the most customers out at once. Times are UTC.
| # | Started (UTC) | Ended (UTC) | Duration | Peak out | Customer-hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | August 25, 2021 12:15 | August 26, 2021 02:45 | 14h 30m | 15,649 | 26K |
| 2 | August 16, 2021 07:30 | August 21, 2021 00:45 | 4d 17h | 15,054 | 207K |
| 3 | August 29, 2021 18:15 | August 29, 2021 21:45 | 3h 30m | 10,837 | 2,886 |
| 4 | August 11, 2021 11:00 | August 13, 2021 01:30 | 1d 14h | 9,047 | 23K |
| 5 | August 8, 2021 09:45 | August 8, 2021 16:00 | 6h 15m | 5,223 | 5,255 |
| 6 | September 22, 2021 13:45 | September 23, 2021 05:15 | 15h 30m | 4,505 | 5,840 |
| 7 | July 12, 2021 07:45 | July 14, 2021 09:15 | 2d 1h | 3,312 | 6,567 |
| 8 | September 13, 2021 11:45 | September 14, 2021 01:45 | 14h | 3,189 | 1,642 |
| 9 | February 15, 2021 19:45 | February 16, 2021 00:00 | 4h 15m | 3,121 | 1,567 |
| 10 | December 1, 2021 09:00 | December 21, 2021 09:30 | 20d | 3,008 | 24K |
Outage episodes by size in 2021: 167 reached 100+ customers, 37 reached 1,000+ customers, 3 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 Buncombe County reported on EIA Form 861 for 2021, 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) | 2021 | 3.1 hrs | 1.39 | 2.4 hrs | 1.34 |
| Duke Energy Carolinas, LLC | 2021 | 3.5 hrs | 1.20 | 2.5 hrs | 1.10 |
| Haywood Electric Member Corp | 2021 | 9.8 hrs | 3.63 | 7.7 hrs | 3.25 |
| 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 92% of North Carolina's customers in 2021; utilities it does not see are not counted.
- Hours per customer = outage customer-minutes ÷ 32,499 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. Buncombe County has data for 2015–2025.
Cite this report
MassOutage (massoutage.com), Buncombe County, NC annual power outage report, 2021, 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/2021/north-carolina/buncombe-county