Where I live, short (usually less than 5 minutes) power outages are common throughout the day. Half a dozen such cuts every single day.
And everytime after a cut and the power comes back, there was a 60 second delay for the internet to reconnect, and about 20 seconds more for VPN to reconnect. Annoying especially when working in teams.
It is unusual not to have a power outage during a 24 hour period.
Here's my current setup to stay ahead of the game:
* Solar panels, with automatic switching between the mains and solar when either of them goes down
* Voltage stabilizers
* Surge protectors
On top of all that I'm currently contemplating getting a UPS for my computer specifically, because there was this one time when the solar failed and it couldn't switch to mains because it was a power outage.
One thing I miss from my student days in the US is always-on electricity. During my 3 year period there, there was only 1 power outage, and that lasted less than a minute.
> Six years without a power cut doesn't seem too surprising.
It depends where you live and / or you might not notice them if they happen at night.
Even in France which is supposed to be a first world country I experience a couple power cuts every month (twice at night this week-end, it killed my tile generation and corrupted my filesystem on my OSM server).
I probably should invest in a UPS instead of complaining on HN !
Maybe they happen when I didn't notice them but in 15 years of living in Austria & then Germany I think the number of power-cuts I experienced would be countable on the fingers of one hand.
A couple a month seems way too much to me. I know for sure my last one here in southern Germany was more than 5 years ago. The only one that I actually remember experiencing during daytime was in my childhood, more than 20 years ago.
Wow, I thought power in France would be great. I'm in NZ, and I'm sure I've gone six years without a power cut. I have a PC that's always on (no UPS), so I'd definitely notice.
The power in France is great, I never heard anyone have so many cuts. The only cuts I encountered is from falling trees due to lots of wind the winter. Otherwise I can count the number of cuts on two hands for the past twenty years.
On the other side of the Tasman they're pretty common due to summer storms. In Queensland having candles ready when we sat down for dinner was an almost daily occurrence some months, the PC and just about everything else would be turned off and unplugged by then. The best nights were when the power went early and we had an emergency Barbecue.
Over the years it got more reliable but I'm not sure if that was universal or just my specific area getting a lot more built up.
Until the relatively recent planned power outages because of fire risk, here in Northern California (an hour north of SF) it was once every year or two.
If I had to guess, I would think it's wildly variable based on location and the factors of that location. A more remote community with one main power line through forested area might experience power loss more often, and a larger city with higher density probably has its own problems with load spikes which may cause problems. Maybe a suburb or medium sized city with semi-recent infrastructure is actually the sweet spot for power reliability?
Here in Gilroy (southern end of the Bay Area) we get one or two outages a month during the summer. Unless it's a planned rolling blackout due to heat, they're usually only a few minutes in length, at least. The Costco-special UPSes I use (CyberPower 1350VA units) have all proven adequate for keeping my work/compute infrastructure online.
I've got solar, though, and a house battery is very much on the list once my budget allows it. I don't see local system stability getting better any time soon, and likely worse now that PG&E has more leeway to shut down power during wind/heat events and the like.
I don't remember a power cut since I moved to my flat in a big city 11 years ago. I would most likely notice because I run my server almost 24/7.
Every month sounds very bad, even when I lived in a countryside in the least wealthy EU province (Lubelskie, Poland) it was never this bad. Maybe once a year (and usually with a warning that it will happen).
It also depends on the status of your local grid/substation. My university was on the same local distribution as a nearby hospital. The hospital had special status for receiving power, for obvious reasons. So in the 10 odd years I spent doing undergrad and post grad studies there was only ever 1 brief power outage during a thunderstorm. Meanwhile nearby suburbs probably averaged 2 power outages per year, typically for a few hours at most.
The power is very reliable until I install a solar panel and feed to the grid. Every time a thunder storm I have to worried as it would happen. Got 2 ups in the house until they reroute the power arrangement in the house so isolate the solar with the household main (by doing something about the fuse sensitivity level). No thunderstorm for sometimes. Still awaiting.
The only one I can remember in recent times - say the last 10 years or so - is when they did “something” out at the Facebook datacenter in clonsilla ...
Yeah, twice in the same weekend is the trigger condition to go ahead and buy a small UPS (or several, depending on how your computers are arranged). Be sure to get one that communicates, usually via USB-HID, so your computer(s) can shut off cleanly if the outage is long.
Power cuts every month doesn't seem very normal to me. I had a home server running for a few years without UPS, and at one point it had over 2 years of uptime.
That's too much. I live in Spain and the last power cut was maybe last summer. It's probably less than once a year on average. Maybe way less, but i'm not sure.
Was "asinine" the word you meant there? It doesn't make sense to me in context.