Who Gets Left in the Dark? A Data-Driven Study of Power Outage Patterns in North Carolina

Abstract

This study examines energy justice in North Carolina by analyzing who is most affected by power outages as grid stress increases. It integrates high-resolution distribution level outage data from Duke Energy (May 2024–January 2026) with socioeconomic, weather, and tree canopy data. Principal component and cluster analysis identify community and outage typologies across four scales: statewide, the Research Triangle, Charlotte metro, and Western North Carolina. Results show that outage risk is multi-dimensional and does not always align cleanly with socioeconomic vulnerability, with several outage-socioeconomic archetypes emerging. Case studies illustrate how infrastructure, weather, vegetation, and historical disinvestment shape reliability. Soft interventions such as resilience hubs and community preparedness outreach are evaluated as cost-effective strategies to reduce outage impacts. Broadly, this study offers an integrated framework for analyzing distribution system reliability and highlights the importance of region-specific outage analysis.