Growing up in the rural Upper Peninsula of Michigan, we rarely had power outages. Even in the fiercest of winters, our water pipes might freeze but the power stayed on. The few times that I can remember the power being out it was for some discernible reason, such as a car hitting a power pole. Here in Maine, where our winters are tame compared to what we had in the UP of Michigan, we have power outages all the time. In the winter, power outages are often attributed to freezing rain building up on the lines but we had freezing rain in Michigan without the power going down. Our power was out today from about 8:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and the weather is just fine. All of Millinocket, East Millinocket and Medway were without power for more than five hours. When we first moved to Maine, we rarely had power outages. About ten or twelve years ago, there was a major brown out that affected much of New England. The problem had to do with an excessive demand for power during a hot summer day, I think it was. When the demand for power exceeds the capacity of the grid, the power company makes decisions based on priorities. So they might cut the power to primarily residential areas for a few hours at a time, but not enough to spoil food in the refrigerator or defrost freezers, then they would restore power to those areas, and cut the power to another area, mostly sparing the areas that they consider important, like the commercial areas of New York City and Boston. That brown out lasted a long time, but Maine was spared. We were spared because Maine was not part of the New England grid. While we have a lot of hydroelectric dams, generating power, Maine is a mostly rural state without much in the way of heavy industry or large commercial areas. Almost immediately after the New England brown out, Maine's legislator introduced and passed a bill putting Maine on the New England grid. They tried to sell it as a good thing and people who weren't paying attention probably thought that it was, but it clearly was not in the best interests of anyone in Maine. More likely, Maine legislators were pressured to join the New England grid so that we could provide power to the rest of New England. The large problem, for us, is that, while Maine produces a great deal of power, very few parts of Maine are considered important enough to receive power when there is a high demand elsewhere. So when the demand for power in the rest of New England exceeds the supply, our power goes south and we go dark. Plus, several of Maine's power dams generate power for Canada, and are not even available to Maine electric users.
I truly sympathize with the situation in regard to your own dams doing more for Canada than Maine but unfortunately it's not the first nor probably the last. When I lived on Lake Mead on the Nevada side I often went to Boulder dam just to putter and look around. Uh, officially the dam is called Hoover Dam but most Nevadans proclaim that no president is worth a dam so they still call it Boulder Dam. When I finally went on a tour, one of the more amazing facts about the dam is that nearly 90% of the power generated from the hydroelectric facility goes to Canada leaving the rest of the neighboring U.S. areas fighting for other ways to produce electricity. One item of note though, is at the time the dam was built the population surrounding the dam was pretty sparse and even less when they finished it and drowned an entire thriving town displacing a thousand or so U.S. citizens. That being said, I did a small Google search and found out that the present much higher populated Nevada, while constantly vetoing any bill allowing Nuclear power, gets much of it's power from surrounding states which use Nuclear energy as a major power source. For whatever reason that I have NOT investigated, Las Vegas rarely has brown outs or any major loss of power while the rest of the state has them all of the time but not because of air conditioning. Nevadans rely on "swamp coolers" which use far less electricity, but a heck of a lot of water.
Much of our lumber goes to Canada too, since the U.S. places far too many restrictions on the forest industry.
We usually have power outages when there is a typhoon as a precaution for the probable falling of electric posts. Particularly here in our village where trees about, it is not unusual for a fallen tree to hit electric wires. When there are storms, that's also the case for same reason of precaution. In the olden days, there were cases of accidental electrocution due to the typhoon or storms. That is reason enough why we do not use the computer when the weather is not good. A sudden power outage can wipe out the unsaved work. There was this typhoon named Yoling that ravaged Metro Manila in 1971, leaving our place with no electricity for almost a month. Fallen electric posts and missing electric wires took that long for the power company to make repairs.
We get very few power outages, mostly during storms..One tip that I use, if the outage is during the night time hours, I bring in one of our solar powered landscape lights for interior lighting..
When we had the terrible tornadoes here in Alabama, and were without electricity for almost two weeks; we used the little outside solar lights for indoor lighting, too, @Ken N Louis . They were just the little pathway lights, and didn't give out a lot of light; but they were as good as having a candle, and we could at least find our way down the hall to the bathroom and back with them. Each morning, I set the lights out in the sun to recharge all day and then brought them in at night. Other than bad storms like that, we do not have a lot of power outages here, although some of the other parts of Huntsville seem to have more issues than we do. We live right across from the arsenal; so maybe we are in a more protected area. One handy little thing that I read was to make a little heater using those little tea light candles and clay flowerpots. I have lots of flowerpots, and bought a package of tea lights, so I think we could assemble one of these if the lights go out and it is very cold. Here is a tutorial to make a small one, and if you look on youtube for tea light heater, there are also larger versions made with baking tins.
Our power was out again this morning, from 4:00 am to about 10:00 am. As for weather, just a light rain. Our last power outage was attributed to a squirrel.