Duke Energy outage leaves 6,700 without power across Guilford County

A Duke Energy outage left about 6,749 Guilford County customers without electricity Friday morning, a countywide hit that reached Greensboro, Jamestown and High Point and briefly knocked out some traffic lights along major commuting routes.

The outage stretched across Wendover Avenue, Piedmont Parkway, Hilltop Road, Tarrant Road, Guilford College Road and NC 68, putting one utility problem in the middle of some of the county’s busiest corridors. At 11:15 a.m., FOX8 reported 99 active outages, a scale that showed the disruption was not confined to one neighborhood. With Duke Energy serving 232,490 customers in Guilford County, the blackout affected roughly 3% of the company’s local customer base.

For households, that kind of outage can mean spoiled food, dead phones, interrupted work-from-home schedules and a stalled morning routine. For businesses, it can mean lost sales, frozen point-of-sale systems and refrigeration worries. The real cost is not just the hours without lights, but the scramble that follows when a countywide system goes dark and no one immediately knows how long the interruption will last.

The failure also became a traffic issue. FOX8 reported that some signals in the affected area were not working, adding confusion at busy intersections and creating the kind of hazard that can ripple far beyond the original utility problem. In Guilford County, where residents move constantly between Greensboro, Jamestown and High Point, dark lights can slow commutes and put drivers and pedestrians at risk.

Duke Energy said it prioritizes essential services first during major outages, then moves to repairs that restore power to the greatest number of customers in the least amount of time. The company also says it may bring in crews from other areas when large outages hit. Customers can report outages by text, phone or online, and Duke Energy says it generally does not assume responsibility for spoiled food or other storm-related losses, advising customers to check their insurer and, if applicable, FEMA.

WFMY News 2 reported that 5,891 customers were affected across five active outages earlier in the day, and by Saturday afternoon only one customer remained without electricity. FOX8 later said power appeared to have been restored in the area, but the outage still underscored how quickly one equipment or grid failure can spread across Guilford County’s fastest-moving corridors.

The episode echoed a 2024 Whitsett outage, when more than 5,000 households and businesses lost power and the Guilford County Sheriff’s Office directed traffic while gas stations, fast food restaurants, retail stores and traffic lights were affected. Taken together, the outages point to a broader vulnerability in a growing county where one disruption can quickly hit commerce, transportation and daily life at the same time.