County annual report · FIPS 37111
2025 McDowell County, NC Power Outage Report
In 2025, customers in McDowell County, NC went without power for an average of 10.0 hours, a total of 124K customer-hours (North Carolina average 9.8 hours). That ranks 42nd worst of 94 North Carolina counties and 800th of 3,000 nationally.
Compared with NC, the US and 2024
Coverage line is EAGLE-I's share of North Carolina customers tracked each year.
Biggest outages in McDowell County, 2025
The 10 outage episodes with the most customers out at once. Times are UTC.
| # | Started (UTC) | Ended (UTC) | Duration | Peak out | Customer-hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | March 20, 2025 23:30 | March 21, 2025 07:15 | 7h 45m | 2,048 | 1,773 |
| 2 | June 25, 2025 13:00 | June 27, 2025 02:15 | 1d 13h | 2,042 | 11K |
| 3 | January 5, 2025 07:00 | January 5, 2025 12:45 | 5h 45m | 1,741 | 5,820 |
| 4 | July 7, 2025 09:15 | July 7, 2025 13:45 | 4h 30m | 1,717 | 5,577 |
| 5 | March 16, 2025 09:00 | March 16, 2025 22:15 | 13h 15m | 1,650 | 6,988 |
| 6 | February 28, 2025 22:45 | March 1, 2025 00:15 | 1h 30m | 1,525 | 383 |
| 7 | February 27, 2025 16:45 | February 28, 2025 00:30 | 7h 45m | 1,380 | 2,181 |
| 8 | June 18, 2025 12:00 | June 19, 2025 22:00 | 1d 10h | 1,375 | 3,358 |
| 9 | April 15, 2025 17:15 | April 16, 2025 00:45 | 7h 30m | 1,333 | 5,679 |
| 10 | January 1, 2025 16:45 | January 1, 2025 17:15 | 30m | 1,205 | 603 |
Outage episodes by size in 2025: 66 reached 100+ customers, 11 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 2025, 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) | 2024 | 17.2 hrs | 1.70 | 2.2 hrs | 1.22 |
| Duke Energy Carolinas, LLC | 2024 | 78.6 hrs | 2.50 | 2.9 hrs | 1.26 |
| Rutherford Elec Member Corp | 2024 | 92.2 hrs | 2.48 | 5.8 hrs | 1.11 |
| 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 2025; 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, 2025, 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/2025/north-carolina/mcdowell-county