That UPS you bought for your home server may not be as useful as you think
<i>I live in a place where blackouts are very infrequent (perhaps a couple per year)</i><p>Ouch.  Does anyone know where the author lives that a couple of times a year is considered "infrequent?"<p>Decades ago I lived in a rural area of America where we'd have power outages two or three times a year because of storms.  But I've lived in more than a dozen cities since then, and the power has only gone out twice.  Once about a decade ago during a tornado, and then again last year when the power company replaced a transformer across the street.<p>I ask because it's my impression that electric service has gotten much more reliable over the years.  There are still access issues where I live now (believe it or not, thousands of Americans don't have access to the electric grid at home), but reliability seems improved.  Am I living in a bubble when it comes to electricity?