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As an anectdotal data point, I live in Poland (Warsaw) and I can't remember the last time I had a power interruption at my home. I don't use UPSs at all, and my

by jwr 2y ago

As an anectdotal data point, I live in Poland (Warsaw) and I can't remember the last time I had a power interruption at my home. I don't use UPSs at all, and my NAS gets years of uptime, unless I decide to reboot it. This gets much worse if you live in the countryside, for obvious reasons, and I would guess that the German average is mostly driven by countryside, not big cities.

wongarsu 2y ago
The typical German experience could be described as "every decades your street loses power for two hours at a time" (which comes out to about that average). As you say, it's worse in rural areas and better in urban areas, though maybe less extreme than in Poland. But power interruptions are typically short and highly localized. Nobody would even think of getting a generator in case the power goes out, and outside a server room nobody has an UPS
- bee_rider 2y ago
  Ah, but a power outage is kind of fun. It is like a little bit of survivalism, but you know the power will be back fairly soon. There’s a whole ritual, fill the tub, get some candles, figure out how to keep the food cold. Next you’ll tell me you don’t have snow days.
  - jwr 2y ago
    > Next you’ll tell me you don’t have snow days well, actually… :-)
- nkrisc 2y ago
  Anecdotally, everyone I know in the US who has a generator didn’t get it because of random power outages, but because of natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and blizzards.
  - wyldfire 2y ago
    Don't those natural disasters get included one way or another into an outage calculation? I suppose parts of the US have more exposure to those disasters than Germany btw.
    - joecool1029 2y ago
      At least in my area (NJ) we lose power around a week on a good year, approx 2 weeks out on a bad year. Outages usually caused by trees falling during thunderstorm/wind, sometimes snow, not hurricane. Oh and drunks slamming into poles. Everyone has generators or other forms of backup power in my area. But problem in recent years was the dead ash trees from emerald ash borer, they took a few years to fully die and weaken but now they just collapse into lines on a good wind gust. Localities that have their own utilities never go down (Madison, NJ), my area is covered by Firstenergy that cheaps out and keeps only a skeleton crew in NJ, so when stuff like the poles snap at end of my driveway it takes 3-4 days to send crews from texas or ohio to replace it.
      - ben_w 2y ago
        > At least in my area (NJ) we lose power around a week on a good year, approx 2 weeks out on a bad year. Outages usually caused by trees falling during thunderstorm/wind, sometimes snow, not hurricane. Oh and drunks slamming into poles. Everyone has generators or other forms of backup power in my area. I had no idea your basic infrastructure was so bad. Why not demand buried cables? Trees can't fall on them, drunk drivers can't knock them down. On the other hand, here in Europe I've never had any problems remotely so common and severe, not in any place I lived, even with overhead power lines, including the tiny remote (by local standards) Welsh hamlet: https://maps.app.goo.gl/AtGFM9C5xJ6GrMJz5?g_st=com.google.maps.preview.copy https://maps.app.goo.gl/AtGFM9C5xJ6GrMJz5?g_st=com.google.ma...
        strken 2y ago
        I'm not an American, but Australia has a comparable number of power outages. A big factor is cost, and population density is what causes cost to be a concern. The EU has a population density that's three times higher than the US; underground lines are three times more expensive than overhead. Australia is of course ten times less dense than the US, comparable to Idaho, but we have a unique combination of moderately dense land in the east and south west plus shockingly sparse areas with little to no infrastructure at all.
Twirrim 2y ago
I had similar experience in the UK. Maybe 3-4 outages in the first nearly 30 years of my life. Moved to the states and even living in the outskirts of Seattle I used to get multiple outages in a year. The funny thing is, every time people from not-the-states talk about how rare power outages are, americans feel this bizarre urge to defend their power companies and grids, coming up with incredibly contortions to explain why it's not even remotely possible to do power the same in the states as elsewhere in the world. One memorable conversation here on HN ended up with the poster, facing the fact that yes, even in countries with lower population density still manage to bury their power cables (because they were claiming people were too far apart), somehow decided that it was because the states didn't have the expertise or equipment for burying power cables. Apparently no one here has diggers, and things like sewage pipes and gas pipes just run over the surface.
- inglor_cz 2y ago
  When I lived in the Czech countryside, we used to have about one outage per year, and it was almost always a planned one, when the grid required maintenance or expansion/upgrade (new houses being built). In the city, there is something like one outage per 4 years, usually due to an extreme thunderstorm or floods. And it usually lasts under 20 minutes. Reliability of the grid is a major indicator of infrastructure quality and I am somewhat surprised by the fact that Americans tolerate so many outages and consider them somehow natural.

by jwr 2y ago

wongarsu 2y ago

The typical German experience could be described as "every decades your street loses power for two hours at a time" (which comes out to about that average). As you say, it's worse in rural areas and better in urban areas, though maybe less extreme than in Poland. But power interruptions are typically short and highly localized. Nobody would even think of getting a generator in case the power goes out, and outside a server room nobody has an UPS

bee_rider 2y ago
Ah, but a power outage is kind of fun. It is like a little bit of survivalism, but you know the power will be back fairly soon. There’s a whole ritual, fill the tub, get some candles, figure out how to keep the food cold. Next you’ll tell me you don’t have snow days.
- jwr 2y ago
  > Next you’ll tell me you don’t have snow days well, actually… :-)
nkrisc 2y ago
Anecdotally, everyone I know in the US who has a generator didn’t get it because of random power outages, but because of natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and blizzards.
- wyldfire 2y ago
  Don't those natural disasters get included one way or another into an outage calculation? I suppose parts of the US have more exposure to those disasters than Germany btw.
  - joecool1029 2y ago
    At least in my area (NJ) we lose power around a week on a good year, approx 2 weeks out on a bad year. Outages usually caused by trees falling during thunderstorm/wind, sometimes snow, not hurricane. Oh and drunks slamming into poles. Everyone has generators or other forms of backup power in my area. But problem in recent years was the dead ash trees from emerald ash borer, they took a few years to fully die and weaken but now they just collapse into lines on a good wind gust. Localities that have their own utilities never go down (Madison, NJ), my area is covered by Firstenergy that cheaps out and keeps only a skeleton crew in NJ, so when stuff like the poles snap at end of my driveway it takes 3-4 days to send crews from texas or ohio to replace it.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      > At least in my area (NJ) we lose power around a week on a good year, approx 2 weeks out on a bad year. Outages usually caused by trees falling during thunderstorm/wind, sometimes snow, not hurricane. Oh and drunks slamming into poles. Everyone has generators or other forms of backup power in my area. I had no idea your basic infrastructure was so bad. Why not demand buried cables? Trees can't fall on them, drunk drivers can't knock them down. On the other hand, here in Europe I've never had any problems remotely so common and severe, not in any place I lived, even with overhead power lines, including the tiny remote (by local standards) Welsh hamlet: https://maps.app.goo.gl/AtGFM9C5xJ6GrMJz5?g_st=com.google.maps.preview.copy https://maps.app.goo.gl/AtGFM9C5xJ6GrMJz5?g_st=com.google.ma...
      - strken 2y ago
        I'm not an American, but Australia has a comparable number of power outages. A big factor is cost, and population density is what causes cost to be a concern. The EU has a population density that's three times higher than the US; underground lines are three times more expensive than overhead. Australia is of course ten times less dense than the US, comparable to Idaho, but we have a unique combination of moderately dense land in the east and south west plus shockingly sparse areas with little to no infrastructure at all.

Twirrim 2y ago

I had similar experience in the UK. Maybe 3-4 outages in the first nearly 30 years of my life. Moved to the states and even living in the outskirts of Seattle I used to get multiple outages in a year. The funny thing is, every time people from not-the-states talk about how rare power outages are, americans feel this bizarre urge to defend their power companies and grids, coming up with incredibly contortions to explain why it's not even remotely possible to do power the same in the states as elsewhere in the world. One memorable conversation here on HN ended up with the poster, facing the fact that yes, even in countries with lower population density still manage to bury their power cables (because they were claiming people were too far apart), somehow decided that it was because the states didn't have the expertise or equipment for burying power cables. Apparently no one here has diggers, and things like sewage pipes and gas pipes just run over the surface.

inglor_cz 2y ago
When I lived in the Czech countryside, we used to have about one outage per year, and it was almost always a planned one, when the grid required maintenance or expansion/upgrade (new houses being built). In the city, there is something like one outage per 4 years, usually due to an extreme thunderstorm or floods. And it usually lasts under 20 minutes. Reliability of the grid is a major indicator of infrastructure quality and I am somewhat surprised by the fact that Americans tolerate so many outages and consider them somehow natural.