County annual report · FIPS 37189
2021 Watauga County, NC Power Outage Report
In 2021, customers in Watauga County, NC went without power for an average of 2.0 hours, a total of 36K customer-hours (North Carolina average 10.3 hours). That ranks 78th worst of 94 North Carolina counties and 2230th 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 Watauga 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 | February 5, 2021 05:15 | February 5, 2021 06:30 | 1h 15m | 6,745 | 5,059 |
| 2 | January 18, 2021 18:15 | January 19, 2021 02:30 | 8h 15m | 2,620 | 4,271 |
| 3 | August 17, 2021 20:15 | August 19, 2021 13:30 | 1d 17h | 1,377 | 10K |
| 4 | August 22, 2021 23:30 | August 23, 2021 00:45 | 1h 15m | 696 | 523 |
| 5 | February 3, 2021 02:45 | February 3, 2021 11:45 | 9h | 636 | 1,569 |
| 6 | June 2, 2021 16:30 | June 2, 2021 21:00 | 4h 30m | 570 | 171 |
| 7 | October 5, 2021 09:15 | October 5, 2021 10:15 | 1h | 507 | 507 |
| 8 | October 7, 2021 11:00 | October 7, 2021 17:00 | 6h | 342 | 1,066 |
| 9 | March 3, 2021 17:00 | March 3, 2021 17:45 | 45m | 313 | 81 |
| 10 | January 16, 2021 22:00 | January 17, 2021 00:00 | 2h | 307 | 170 |
Outage episodes by size in 2021: 24 reached 100+ customers, 3 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 Watauga 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blue Ridge Elec Member Corp - (NC) | 2021 | 89 min | 1.04 | 62 min | 0.90 |
| New River Light & Power Co | 2021 | 7 min | 0.08 | 7 min | 0.08 |
| Mountain Electric Coop, Inc | - | - | - | - | - |
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 ÷ 18,248 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. Watauga County has data for 2015–2025.
Cite this report
MassOutage (massoutage.com), Watauga 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/watauga-county