County annual report · FIPS 37039
2021 Cherokee County, NC Power Outage Report
In 2021, customers in Cherokee County, NC went without power for an average of 6.9 hours, a total of 111K customer-hours (North Carolina average 10.3 hours). That ranks 42nd worst of 94 North Carolina counties and 1042nd 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 Cherokee 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 | September 4, 2021 07:45 | September 4, 2021 17:45 | 10h | 3,481 | 15K |
| 2 | November 28, 2021 17:30 | November 28, 2021 21:15 | 3h 45m | 2,019 | 2,023 |
| 3 | June 12, 2021 12:30 | June 13, 2021 03:45 | 15h 15m | 2,001 | 701 |
| 4 | March 16, 2021 06:15 | March 16, 2021 15:00 | 8h 45m | 1,828 | 5,283 |
| 5 | July 2, 2021 09:45 | July 2, 2021 19:45 | 10h | 1,706 | 9,731 |
| 6 | July 11, 2021 15:00 | July 11, 2021 23:45 | 8h 45m | 1,643 | 6,140 |
| 7 | July 14, 2021 10:45 | July 14, 2021 19:30 | 8h 45m | 1,602 | 5,103 |
| 8 | July 16, 2021 17:45 | July 16, 2021 18:15 | 30m | 1,582 | 791 |
| 9 | June 25, 2021 16:15 | June 25, 2021 21:45 | 5h 30m | 1,460 | 833 |
| 10 | February 26, 2021 01:30 | February 26, 2021 06:15 | 4h 45m | 1,447 | 784 |
Outage episodes by size in 2021: 73 reached 100+ customers, 17 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 Cherokee 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 |
| Blue Ridge Mountain EMC - (GA) | 2021 | 5.1 hrs | 3.35 | 4.4 hrs | 3.10 |
| Tri-State Electric Member Corp | - | - | - | - | - |
| Town of Murphy - (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 ÷ 16,160 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. Cherokee County has data for 2015–2025.
Cite this report
MassOutage (massoutage.com), Cherokee 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/cherokee-county