We're lucky here that we don't get brown outs and very few power outages, I think that since I moved here we have only had 2 or 3 power cuts in the past 24 years. 
Then your power system in your neighborhood is underground, mine is both underground and overhead, which is weird because thats how the power company, which is Center Point Energy designed it. Dispite that my neighborhood and other neighborhoods in my area, are all in the same power line circuit, which causes sometimes power outages.
Two houses in my neighborhood have back-up standby natural gas generators which kicks in when theres a power outage. And all that does is theres a transfer switch that switches to utility power, to generator power for the house. Oh yeah those generators are made by Generac.
