County annual report · FIPS 37189
2023 Watauga County, NC Power Outage Report
In 2023, customers in Watauga County, NC went without power for an average of 2.0 hours, a total of 37K customer-hours (North Carolina average 12.6 hours). That ranks 82nd worst of 94 North Carolina counties and 2283rd 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 Watauga 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 | December 14, 2023 14:15 | December 14, 2023 16:45 | 2h 30m | 1,383 | 1,065 |
| 2 | February 10, 2023 14:00 | February 10, 2023 16:45 | 2h 45m | 1,357 | 1,348 |
| 3 | April 17, 2023 18:30 | April 17, 2023 22:00 | 3h 30m | 1,342 | 2,265 |
| 4 | February 17, 2023 15:30 | February 17, 2023 15:45 | 15m | 1,340 | 335 |
| 5 | February 17, 2023 17:00 | February 17, 2023 17:15 | 15m | 1,340 | 335 |
| 6 | July 13, 2023 21:15 | July 13, 2023 23:00 | 1h 45m | 1,103 | 1,238 |
| 7 | December 8, 2023 04:30 | December 8, 2023 10:00 | 5h 30m | 997 | 1,200 |
| 8 | July 1, 2023 22:00 | July 2, 2023 03:15 | 5h 15m | 990 | 1,013 |
| 9 | August 27, 2023 14:30 | August 27, 2023 19:45 | 5h 15m | 777 | 812 |
| 10 | December 4, 2023 21:15 | December 5, 2023 01:15 | 4h | 717 | 546 |
Outage episodes by size in 2023: 32 reached 100+ customers, 6 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 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blue Ridge Elec Member Corp - (NC) | 2023 | 81 min | 1.08 | 69 min | 0.99 |
| Mountain Electric Coop, Inc | 2023 | 4.3 hrs | 3.04 | 4.3 hrs | 3.04 |
| New River Light & Power Co | 2023 | 38 min | 0.44 | 38 min | 0.44 |
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 ÷ 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, 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/watauga-county