County annual report · FIPS 37047
2021 Columbus County, NC Power Outage Report
In 2021, customers in Columbus County, NC went without power for an average of 1.7 hours, a total of 38K customer-hours (North Carolina average 10.3 hours). That ranks 85th worst of 94 North Carolina counties and 2382nd 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 Columbus 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 | November 25, 2021 00:45 | November 25, 2021 01:45 | 1h | 2,578 | 2,577 |
| 2 | March 27, 2021 18:30 | March 27, 2021 19:45 | 1h 15m | 1,682 | 1,682 |
| 3 | May 13, 2021 16:45 | May 13, 2021 19:00 | 2h 15m | 1,565 | 2,347 |
| 4 | August 11, 2021 14:00 | August 11, 2021 16:00 | 2h | 1,221 | 1,547 |
| 5 | July 29, 2021 01:30 | July 29, 2021 10:15 | 8h 45m | 1,123 | 3,116 |
| 6 | June 8, 2021 19:45 | June 8, 2021 21:30 | 1h 45m | 890 | 447 |
| 7 | November 1, 2021 15:30 | November 1, 2021 22:00 | 6h 30m | 886 | 483 |
| 8 | September 14, 2021 13:30 | September 14, 2021 17:30 | 4h | 842 | 639 |
| 9 | November 29, 2021 18:30 | November 30, 2021 03:45 | 9h 15m | 813 | 690 |
| 10 | January 26, 2021 00:45 | January 26, 2021 01:15 | 30m | 802 | 401 |
Outage episodes by size in 2021: 37 reached 100+ customers, 5 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 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 |
| Brunswick Electric Member Corp | 2021 | 2.7 hrs | 1.38 | 32 min | 0.70 |
| 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 92% of North Carolina's customers in 2021; 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, 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/columbus-county