County annual report · FIPS 37023
2021 Burke County, NC Power Outage Report
In 2021, customers in Burke County, NC went without power for an average of 4.6 hours, a total of 91K customer-hours (North Carolina average 10.3 hours). That ranks 52nd worst of 94 North Carolina counties and 1415th 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 Burke 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 17, 2021 16:30 | August 19, 2021 09:30 | 1d 17h | 4,875 | 5,753 |
| 2 | April 11, 2021 00:30 | April 11, 2021 22:45 | 22h 15m | 3,171 | 33K |
| 3 | March 16, 2021 13:15 | March 16, 2021 17:45 | 4h 30m | 2,960 | 5,875 |
| 4 | November 12, 2021 05:15 | November 12, 2021 06:15 | 1h | 2,163 | 2,163 |
| 5 | October 10, 2021 04:15 | October 10, 2021 04:45 | 30m | 2,146 | 1,073 |
| 6 | October 17, 2021 04:15 | October 17, 2021 05:30 | 1h 15m | 1,737 | 2,171 |
| 7 | February 2, 2021 08:45 | February 2, 2021 19:30 | 10h 45m | 1,151 | 5,343 |
| 8 | August 14, 2021 20:45 | August 15, 2021 12:00 | 15h 15m | 1,110 | 1,981 |
| 9 | May 3, 2021 15:30 | May 3, 2021 22:30 | 7h | 1,091 | 2,276 |
| 10 | August 16, 2021 03:30 | August 17, 2021 02:00 | 22h 30m | 1,089 | 2,664 |
Outage episodes by size in 2021: 39 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 Burke 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 Carolinas, LLC | 2021 | 3.5 hrs | 1.20 | 2.5 hrs | 1.10 |
| Rutherford Elec Member Corp | 2021 | 1.7 hrs | 0.85 | 63 min | 0.61 |
| Duke Energy | - | - | - | - | - |
| Mountain Electric Coop, Inc | - | - | - | - | - |
| City of Morganton - (NC) | - | - | - | - | - |
| Town of Drexel - (NC) | - | - | - | - | - |
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 ÷ 19,746 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. Burke County has data for 2015–2025.
Cite this report
MassOutage (massoutage.com), Burke 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/burke-county