Knoxville Metro · Outage Record
How Bad Do Knoxville Outages Actually Get?
In August 2023, roughly 74,615 KUB customers lost power and restoration ran about 78 hours. This is the dated record — what happened, how many households, and how long — assembled from the storm surveys and utility reporting rather than estimated.
In short
- The benchmark event is August 7, 2023: an EF-2 tornado, roughly 74,615 KUB customers out over the event, and about 78 hours to restore. That is three days, not three hours.
- The driver here is trees, not equipment. KUB attributes at least half of its outages to vegetation, and in the 2023 tornado roughly 83% were tree-caused with another 10% from lightning.
- Outages of scale are not confined to one town. The record includes events reaching Knox and Blount counties in different years and from different storm types.
- Restoration time — not the number of customers — is what decides whether backup power matters to a household. A multi-day restoration is the scenario a standby generator is bought for.
Read this if
- You are deciding whether backup power is justified where you live.
- You want the actual local record rather than a national statistic about "the grid".
- You are new to East Tennessee and want to know what storm season here looks like.
Skip it if
- You want live outage status — that is your utility’s outage map, not a reference page.
- You have already decided to buy and want sizing or cost.
What to confirm for your own home
- Which utility actually serves your address — this metro has several, and their outage histories are not interchangeable.
- Your own street’s tree exposure, which is the single biggest local variable in whether you lose power.
What this page does not do
It is not a live outage map and it does not forecast. It publishes no outage-frequency rate, because no source establishes one for these counties — the dated events are what the record supports. Knoxville Generator Pros is a publisher, not a utility.
The dated record
Three events with figures solid enough to publish. Where a number could not be attributed cleanly to a specific utility, it is left out rather than borrowed from a neighbouring one.
August 7, 2023
A rare EF-2 tornado with 130 mph winds cut a 3.8-mile path through West Knox County, from the Hardin Valley area toward Pellissippi Parkway.
~74,615 KUB customers experienced an outage over the event, peaking near 57,000 at once. Restoration took roughly 78 hours — among KUB’s top-five events, and its third largest.
Sources: NWS Morristown storm survey; KUB figures reported via WATE/WBIR. Retrieved 2026-07-21.
July 30, 2024
Severe storms and flash flooding crossed East Tennessee. In Maryville, downed lines closed East Lamar Alexander Parkway between Buchanan Road and John Helton Road.
The larger customer figure reported that day belonged to ALCOA Electric, not Maryville Electric, so no count is attributed to Maryville here.
Sources: WATE/WBIR reporting. Retrieved 2026-07-21. Reported rather than officially dated, or carrying an attribution constraint noted above.
May 2025
Severe storms with strong winds, hail and isolated tornadoes swept the region in mid-May.
More than 19,000 Knox County KUB customers lost power.
Sources: WATE/WBIR reporting. Retrieved 2026-07-21. Reported rather than officially dated, or carrying an attribution constraint noted above.
Why East Tennessee, specifically
The regional answer is tree cover. KUB attributes at least about half of its outages to vegetation, and in the August 2023 tornado roughly 83% of outages were tree-caused with another 10% from lightning. That matters for a homeowner because it changes what an outage looks like: vegetation damage is distributed across many spans rather than concentrated at one substation, and distributed damage takes crews longer to work through. It is the mechanism behind a 78-hour restoration.
Your utility is probably not the one next door
This metro is served by several separate electric utilities, and an outage figure for one is not a figure for another. Knoxville is KUB; Farragut's electricity comes from LCUB; Maryville and Oak Ridge each run their own municipal electric department. Each city guide names the utility for that market — Knoxville, Farragut, Maryville and Oak Ridge.
Vegetation share from kub.org; storm-specific cause split from the August 2023 event reporting. Retrieved 2026-07-21. Utility assignments verified per city, July 2026.
What a multi-day outage actually costs a household
A three-hour outage is an inconvenience. A 78-hour one is a different category: it is a full freezer, a sump pump that stops during the same storm that is putting water in the ground, a well pump that leaves the house without water, and — for some households — medical equipment with no runtime left. Those four are the loads that decide whether backup power is worth its cost, and they are exactly the ones a load calculation is built around.
A standby generator is not the only answer to that scenario, and this site does not pretend it is. It is the answer that runs unattended, transfers automatically within seconds, and does not require anyone to go outside during the storm that caused the outage. What it costs, honestly, is on the cost guide; whether the sizing works for your particular loads is the sizing guide; and if you decide to proceed, the installation and permitting guide covers the process end to end, including who issues the permit in each of the 8 counties covered here.
Deciding after the last one?
Tell us about your home and what has to stay on. We connect you with established local installers who work in Knox, Anderson, Blount and neighboring counties.
Researching first? The Knoxville guide covers permits, utilities and local cost drivers, or send a full project brief when you are ready for a real conversation.