Above ground electric lines vs buried ones are a good example of how quickly your ROI can drop off for infrastructure problems.

Spending 10 million to add cold-weather protection to a powerplant that services 5million people? No brainer. Spending 10 million to bury 100 miles of power line that services 1000 people? Ehh...

All power cables except for long-distance transport are underground though, which probably helps a lot and might account for the difference to a large extend.

(Our microwave oven did trip our residual-current circuit breaker a few weeks ago, never encountered that before, only 'fuse switch'-flips. Sadly that was the end of the device after 16 years.)

But I was very surprised to learn that until 2021, most Texans had never had a power interruption in decades (which I suppose added to their panic).

Not all that useful to say "the US" here. California has it's wildfires and earthquakes. The west has extreme temperature swings. Southeast has hurricanes, and northeast has trees, ice, and wind. The entire south likes to run air conditioning. What does your country or its neighbors face? How about 10 countries over?

I've lost hope. In theory it can be done but it feels something on the same order as setting foot on the moon again. We have the technology and capability to do so but somehow our population collective decision results in keep things garabge.

A lot of homes have gas or propane generators that will cut on when a power outage is detected.

Make UPS data available over SNMP, track via MRTG. A simple, decidedly 1990s solution that unsurprisingly still works. Pretty graphs and everything.

This is what I was thinking. Specifically I have several different models of Zigbee and Z-wave "smart outlets" among the myriad IoT devices I've evaluated. While reading through the OP, I found myself wondering if one of them could just be left in the "ON" state, powering nothing (or something I always want running like a freezer). Then I could simply have HomeAssistant, which is backed by a UPS along with my modem and router, report its status.

You will not be able to just point the radio in your zigbee stick at your meter. As far as I know, the only device that is even blessed with the keys to do this is the Rainforest/Eagle device. You _still_ have to get permission from your utility, though. PG&E has a web page where you plug in the MAC for the radio and submit it. Only some customers on some rate plans are allowed to access this.

I gave up and went with a power monitor that’s installed in the main breaker box. It uses CT clamps on each circuit to give very accurate and timely readings.