| Am I living in a bubble when it comes to electricity? Your electricity service may not be as reliable as you think - some utility power can be quite "dirty"

| Am I living in a bubble when it comes to electricity? Your electricity service may not be as reliable as you think - some utility power can be quite "dirty" with high levels of distortion. There's a lot of infrastructure between you and the power company that can cause problems. A good UPS will not only protect against outages, but will filter/condition utility power. I live in Chicago, in an older apartment building. I haven't had a full on outage in the past few years, but during major storms I have seen some flickering and other issues. I just looked at the readout on the UPS, and so far it's kicked in 5 times this year. I have a pretty sizable NAS (40TB) and a beefy workstation - the $200 I spent on an APC BR1500MS is well worth the protection. Safety is another consideration. My parents live on their hobby farm a few hours away - they are the only house at the end of a mile long road with older power lines. I put a similar UPS to keep their alarm/phone/network online. If there's a medical alarm, fire, carbon monoxide, water leak, etc the alarm can still alert the monitoring company, their internet/VoIP landline can fail over to cellular, and we can get alerted that something is up. Again, the peace of mind alone is well worth the $200 (plus $100 for a battery every few years).