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People who live in low-density rural areas almost anywhere will occasionally have power outages because branches and other things picked up by the wind will hit overhead HV lines and rural areas are often served by a single radial HV feeder.

In a 240V system, that feeder will typically feed one or more pad-mounted distribution substations which feed properties and in very rural areas a number of pole-mounted smaller distribution transformers.

In a 110V system, many more properties are fed from pole-mounted transformers (because you want to minimise length of 110V runs due to resistance losses and you therefore do not want the extensive LV mains used in a 240V system.

In general, the US has longer lengths of vulnerable HV lines but fewer of them are radials (in other words, more US HV runs between two HV/EHV subs and can therefore be sectionalised and run from either end). Therefore an HV fault is more common in the US but it is less likely to take out as many people for as long.

In this case though, it scarcely matters since either system is likely to have properties connected to only a single HV line which comes off as a spur from an EHV/HV substation. These HV lines are often on poles in rural areas and therefore vulnerable to damage in heavy weather. This happens less in urban areas because HV lines tend to be buried there. In The Netherlands which is one extreme, everything under 50kV is buried but NL is a very dense country.

There is no point comparing your experience of power cuts in Amsterdam, London, Copenhagen, vs Chicago or NYC because power cuts are quite rare in all of these places. If you live in the English Lake District in a small village or in a small town in a rural area of the US, you are likely to have experienced power cuts. Performance on continuity of service measures like TIEPI varies much more within countries than between them.




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