Just got a notice that power will be cut all day for pole replacement. A steel transmission pole has been laying by the side of the road a few miles downhill from us, so that might be the one. But a neighbor’s notice read one day difference, so it might be two days?? In the city they used to set the new pole and “hot-stick” onto it, but up here there is a greater potential for destruction (forest fire) I suppose. Or maybe they stopped hot-sticking because they drop the lines too frequently, I saw it happen once and it caught a building on fire. Dangerous stuff. If it goes into the late evening my LT1 has charged batteries!
In southern Ontario, the only extended power outage I’ve lived through was the 2003 blackout. Aside from that, maybe a few hours once or twice for idiots hitting distribution infrastructure. My mum lives in a more rural area and has lost power for days at a time due to weather taking down power lines.
it;s pretty reliable
atlanta area
not sure what you can really learn from a survey like this
i feel like my answer is not what you want to hear 
wle
Oregon: 2 locations
Portland - very rare we ever lose power. Last time was perhaps 6 months back, a car took out a pole at 2 AM. The previous time may have been a winter storm 6 months previous.
Coast small village we go down on weekends and approx 85% of the times I start the day by resetting all of the LED clocks. The clocks on the range, the music player, microwave are all blinking and off. The timers are all off as well. Clearly power went out during the week, can’t say how often. It would be a rare month where the power had not gone out more than once but I confess I have not tracked it.
As luck would have it, we had just a little wink last night.
Half a second at most. Just enough to make all the UPSs light up and chirp.
The best present you can buy for a desktop computer is a UPS.
All the Best,
Jeff
I'm getting quite a bit out of it by seeing the variety of answers, especially when combined with people's locations. It's a nice reminder to myself that I'm not crazy -- power reliability in Florida is pretty poor compared to other regions and that the precautions/planning I do as standard in Florida is complete overkill for projects we have in other areas. The concept of going a month without a power problem, let alone 2 years, is mind-blowing to me.
I've seen some people mention cost of electricity vs. reliability. The US cost per kWh run $0.083/kWh to $0.373/kWh. Florida averages about $0.12/kWh. There's plenty of extra fees and taxes on top of that. Using Florida as a guide, there's NO correlation between the cost of electric service and reliability. Duke Energy is one of the most expensive energy companies in Florida and has some of the worst reliability, bar none. Almost all self-inflicted, like when they decided to stop trimming trees for a couple of years to save money. Florida Power & Light (FPL) has a well-documented history of neglecting their grid, with 50-75 year old wooden power poles decaying around the state. To FPL's credit, they have been making decent progress on replacing and upgrading their grid over the past 10 or so years. Still a long way to go.
As far as non-profit/municipal owned vs. investor-owned, I definitely see better reliability with the municipal-owned/co-op services over investor-owned ones, at least for day-to-day. When it comes to hurricanes and recovery from them, the investor-owned ones seem to be up quicker, minus Duke.
Interestingly, hurricanes have been very good at improving long-term reliability here. As each hurricane takes out more neglected grid, the replacement grid is better and stronger, and the temporary linemen on loan to us from across the country do an amazing job of making sure things are done right the first time.
well
every utility has its own costs and problems
i would not guess that the price/kwh has much to do with reliability
i mean it does, but there are at least 25 other factors that influence it
rates
corruption
cost of the generation
density of population
wle
generally, we have three kinds of power interruptions:
1. the “blip”. power out just long enough so we have to reset/reboot. don’t know the cause.
2. the “call the power company”. usually a tree or construction cuts the line. fixed that day.
3. the “get out the generator”. weather related. mostly hurricanes. days maybe weeks without.
Unno. Which?
Guessing poles are easier to drill down (every 100 ft or so) than sawing an UG system through solid (and sometime shifting) bedrock. We had a line run a few miles into a ranch we had in the 80s. They tried sawing through rock (with a 15 ft diameter blade with about 300, 12” long carbine teeth). They gave up after the first 1/2 mile and went to poles the rest of the way.
That’s what I figured, too, as a practical matter. But some scenic but loony locales would actually ban stringing “ugly” power lines on “ugly” poles, and would require power cables be buried underground for æsthetic reasons, no matter what the cost.
I had a couple "blips" a few days ago. Due to UPSs, the network, PCs, and TV were unaffected. What was interesting was the oven/stove kept its time through one of them. The Microwave did not.
I used to have a floor lamp on a UPS, but it was both inefficient, and the LED bulb didn't agree with the "modified sine wave" (read: square wave) the UPS put out. So now I have five UPSs:
- My PC and the modem/router (largest unit, it's a 750VA but the rack-mount, runtime-oriented one)
- Wife's PC (pretty standard 1100VA home-use unit. Actually gives less runtime on less load than above)
- Big TV in the living room, and associated peripherals (850VA, nothing special)
- Small TV in the bedroom, and associated peripherals (550VA)
- Switch and PoE injector in the basement, to keep the rest of the network/wifi up during blips. (350VA, cheapest by far and the only non-APC)
While, yes, it's kind of neat when the power blips and my PC use is completely uninterrupted, I've mostly got the units for the surge protection.
I was going to say once every other year. But power has been out six times in the past 12 months at home in Melbourne, Australia. Each time the outage lasted around 6 to 9 hours. My supplier sends letters in advance to inform customers so that we can plan around fridges having no power etc. They also send an SMS during planned and unplanned outages. And there’s a website that shows the outages.
My mobile / cell phone service provider doesn’t list outages in my area. So when power goes out and a mobile site doesn’t come back online, people connect to other mobile sites further away. Hundreds of households that would otherwise use a fixed line connection (VDSL, HFC, Fibre) discover that nothing works when the power is out. They all start using their mobile phones instead and everything becomes congested.
I bought a few Arlec headlamps for AU$5 back in January from a local hardware store. They came in handy during a recent outage. Battery packs, laptops, mobile phones, 4G portable hotspot etc allow us to stay connected and get work done from home.
Was glad to move out of rural Virginia near Richmond. The slightest threat of a thunderstorm and the power would go out. Sometimes for an hour, sometimes all day, and would happen at least once a month. Hurricanes, longer. We had a 13 day outage after hurricane Isabel, and several 5 plus day outages over the 15yrs I lived there. I went through 160 gallons of fuel in the generator during Isabel. Then the power bill came in, and it was over double the cost. I’m like wtf? they didn’t supply any power for half the month. Turns out, Dominion Power is allowed by law, to pass on emergency repair damages to the consumers. 
Definitely contributing to the “ugly” part…
Almost never.
Fairly frequently, its a long run between me and the power plant with lots and lots of trees. Storms, wind, equal a few hours of outage. This year fewer problems as the power company went on an aggressive tree trimming binge. I have mixed feelings about the results. Glad to have less outages but they hacked the heck out of the trees making my drive to and from anywhere much less pleasant.
The power went out for about 45 minutes tonight.
We're in the middle of summer, so it was hot in the house (and outside) even though it was 3am.
Luckily this only happens about once or twice a year.
Also, I was awake, which was convenient.
The dog got scared and peed in the house when the power went out.
He's my dog, so I had to clean it up, using a headlight to see.
Our two cats don't seem to freak out when the power goes out, but my dog gets scared pretty easily.
Scaredy… dog?
Yup, scaredy dog...
...
Oh my gosh!
We just went through almost a ten hour power outage.
It started at 5:20am and it was 117° F (or 47° C) today.
Most of my family went to the mall for air conditioning, but it was brutal for us today.
We heard that as many as 7,000 people were without power today.
I haven't seen today's local news yet, but I'm sure it will be mentioned.
Considering how hot it was, this was our worst power outage in the six years we have lived here.
I'm really hoping they fixed the problem and we won't be going through this again.