County annual report · FIPS 37111
2023 McDowell County, NC Power Outage Report
In 2023, customers in McDowell County, NC went without power for an average of 8.6 hours, a total of 108K customer-hours (North Carolina average 12.6 hours). That ranks 48th worst of 94 North Carolina counties and 959th of 2,977 nationally.
Compared with NC, the US and 2022
Coverage line is EAGLE-I's share of North Carolina customers tracked each year.
Biggest outages in McDowell County, 2023
The 10 outage episodes with the most customers out at once. Times are UTC.
| # | Started (UTC) | Ended (UTC) | Duration | Peak out | Customer-hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | May 16, 2023 21:15 | May 17, 2023 08:15 | 11h | 2,662 | 3,085 |
| 2 | April 15, 2023 03:45 | April 15, 2023 07:45 | 4h | 2,303 | 7,809 |
| 3 | December 26, 2023 08:15 | December 27, 2023 23:45 | 1d 15h | 1,691 | 9,537 |
| 4 | June 20, 2023 22:15 | June 22, 2023 02:15 | 1d 4h | 1,525 | 8,061 |
| 5 | April 1, 2023 18:15 | April 3, 2023 19:00 | 2d | 1,353 | 25K |
| 6 | August 4, 2023 13:00 | August 4, 2023 16:30 | 3h 30m | 1,161 | 4,062 |
| 7 | July 8, 2023 11:45 | July 8, 2023 13:15 | 1h 30m | 1,156 | 1,591 |
| 8 | January 14, 2023 10:45 | January 15, 2023 01:15 | 14h 30m | 1,020 | 3,645 |
| 9 | March 25, 2023 08:45 | March 25, 2023 17:30 | 8h 45m | 1,013 | 3,777 |
| 10 | April 30, 2023 17:15 | April 30, 2023 19:45 | 2h 30m | 510 | 983 |
Outage episodes by size in 2023: 48 reached 100+ customers, 9 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 McDowell County reported on EIA Form 861 for 2023, 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) | 2023 | 3.7 hrs | 1.47 | 2.4 hrs | 1.22 |
| Duke Energy Carolinas, LLC | 2023 | 5.0 hrs | 1.68 | 3.3 hrs | 1.52 |
| Rutherford Elec Member Corp | 2023 | 2.4 hrs | 1.09 | 1.6 hrs | 0.88 |
| 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 n/a of North Carolina's customers in 2023; 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, 2023, 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/2023/north-carolina/mcdowell-county