inspired by tsetse’s “When power goes out what light do you grab first?” i was wondering in which part of the world/country does this happen often, we already heard that in Amsterdam it is almost never…and here in Macedonia when power goes out we always say: if we were in Germany (or USA) this would never happen, so here is a chance to have first hand info on that…
Hardly ever here 
Well maybe 3 or 4 times a year for an hour or so. Mostly during the day 
Usually the result of storms knocking out old above ground power lines.
Where I live the power lines are underground.
During peak load times in summer when air conditioners run, they bring in large generators to supplement the grid.
We have mountains of coal to burn (and sell) and now there is lots of domestic solar power too.
Coastal Queensland, Australia.
It happens a couple of time a year, usually for a day, once for 5 days. 4 years ago I bought a 7,000 watt generator and no longer worry about it.
Almost never... on normal days.
except during/after big earthquakes..
Tokyo, Japan
rarely since a new power station is been build near my town,is it a bliss or a curse? 
Well, I don’t remember the incidents count, but my uninterruptible power supply logs usually something like 20…30 seconds per year. I live only 500m from a 150MW coal power plant though. 
Back in the day when I lived in an area as rural as it gets over here it was about two or three minutes per year.
I think the average outage time in Germany is about 15 minutes per year.
It is mostly the sum of second or sub-second outages I think. The last outage I remember that was longer than a few seconds was over a decade ago in a really beautiful thunderstorm.
Has to have an advantage to be a small highly populated country.
10 years ago a cat 2 hurricane ripped through here and took out power in pretty much the whole city and surrounding areas for seven (in some places more) days. People got really mad at the power company for being ill-prepared, so since then they’ve been upgrading equipment and organising for better response times. The problem is that it has made power outages very rare and short events, I still live in the area and the power has gone out maybe three times since then. In the two years I’ve been collecting flashlights it hasn’t gone out once, go figure.
I’d probably grab my 3-mode 3A L2P XM-L U3, it always has a battery in it and is usually near by. Then I can use it to find the more powerful lights in the dark. 
Almost never, maybe once in 3-5 years.
Two years ago, everyone was blasting their AC during the summer and we did have a power shortage though. :~
rural mountain west USA. Happens frequently. Power was out for ~14 hours over last wknd due to wet snow dropping branches on power transmission lines. Always keep water on hand (water from my well requires electricity). Longest outage 2 to 3 days but that was during forest fire/flood.
around 4 times per year in Poland
In Socorro we only lose power for more than a few minutes a few times a year, although I used to have to reset the clock on my microwave every month or so when the power would go out for less than a minute.
Reminds me of the days when everyone had a VCR that would lose it’s time even after a couple seconds long power outages- and had to reprogram it in the most painful and uncomfortable way.
Reprogramming them after thunderstorms was actually an important part of my master’s business back then.
Happens quite often here. Mostly localized in certain areas due to storms causing trees to come down on power lines. Couple hrs at a time and we're back up.
Most people here are only concerned with no electricity to power the espresso machine at Starbucks. Sad really!
About 12 years ago we personally lost power for 6 days ..
average outages locally from that storm ranged from 3 days to 14 days depending on the area .
One of the largest power outages caused by a natural disaster in the history of the Midwest with about 3.7 million customers losing power (well over 8 million people), including 2.6 million outages in the state of Ohio alone[4] 26 people were killed in the interior states. Ohio alone sustained over $560 million in damage.[5]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_Hurricane_Ike_in_inland_North_America
I believe there was a small outage sometime this year, but it was short, and happened when I was sleeping. Since I can't confirm, I don't count that one. The last power outage before that was in September 2011. It wasn't a normal outage. It took down a significant part of the southwestern United States and millions of households. The last power outage before that was due to rolling blackouts. I had expected more of those since then when the nuclear power plant was shutdown, but we got through that just fine. Now unless there's another freak accident or disaster, I wouldn't be surprised if we go another 10 years without a blackout.
I create my own power outages… with the flip of a switch!
here we live in a very rural area of SW Az and run on a well to so we have a couple hundred gallons stored we usually have about 4 power outages a year usaully during summer monsoons.
I’d almost wish the power would go out more over here (Netherlands)
I would have more reason to use my flashlights.
In my region in the last 10 years I can only remember one power outtage, around 5 years ago and this was due to some company hitting a power cable and power was out for less then 12 hours.
I didn’t have as much lights as I have now, but I was really happy with my x2000 zoomable light from DX.
But next time I’m prepared :bigsmile:
When I lived on countryside, maybe 1-2h per year. Back 20yrs ago…
Now at 8,000 inhabitants village at countryside, maybe 1sec outage a couple of times a year for last 7 years.
Pretty much unnoticeable…
National average is 0.3 minutes per user/year or 0.13 outages per user/year…
Summer is no prob, if we get long outage at winter, houses will be cold fast. Not mine though, I have an “oversized” heat source, Nunnauuni ™ fireplace. Goes for a sole heatsource, no matter how cold it gets!
Almost never in NJ unless it’s a gigantic storm. During sandy I lost power all of 5 seconds.
Good and bad thing I suppose. It’s fun when it goes out…for an hour or so.