County annual report · FIPS 37111
2021 McDowell County, NC Power Outage Report
In 2021, customers in McDowell County, NC went without power for an average of 12.8 hours, a total of 159K customer-hours (North Carolina average 10.3 hours). That ranks 31st worst of 94 North Carolina counties and 650th 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 McDowell 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 16, 2021 21:45 | August 19, 2021 00:30 | 2d 2h | 14,647 | 62K |
| 2 | December 22, 2021 04:45 | December 22, 2021 08:45 | 4h | 3,884 | 16K |
| 3 | February 2, 2021 04:15 | February 2, 2021 05:00 | 45m | 3,872 | 1,936 |
| 4 | July 26, 2021 09:00 | July 26, 2021 17:15 | 8h 15m | 3,202 | 11K |
| 5 | August 14, 2021 20:15 | August 15, 2021 20:00 | 23h 45m | 2,005 | 3,444 |
| 6 | August 31, 2021 15:30 | September 1, 2021 19:45 | 1d 4h | 1,738 | 8,265 |
| 7 | July 20, 2021 03:30 | July 20, 2021 05:45 | 2h 15m | 1,470 | 2,689 |
| 8 | May 7, 2021 19:15 | May 7, 2021 23:00 | 3h 45m | 1,434 | 1,095 |
| 9 | September 2, 2021 13:45 | September 3, 2021 00:45 | 11h | 1,362 | 1,785 |
| 10 | August 3, 2021 17:15 | August 3, 2021 17:30 | 15m | 1,048 | 262 |
Outage episodes by size in 2021: 55 reached 100+ customers, 10 reached 1,000+ customers, 1 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 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 |
| Rutherford Elec Member Corp | 2021 | 1.7 hrs | 0.85 | 63 min | 0.61 |
| 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 ÷ 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, 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/mcdowell-county