We’re in the Boston area (west suburban town) and there are outages about every 4-5 months (Eversource). It’s quite annoying and I’m contemplating getting a whole house generator. My solar panels do nothing during an outage. Would love to get a couple of Tesla Powerwalls but too expensive and long waiting list.

California is a far bigger state in both population and area. Much of that area is also uninhabited, but power lines cross it. Many are quite old and not well maintained, and either start fires or are subject to other climate issues (fires, snow, high winds, etc). It’s a more challenging environment, plus PG&E is basically incompetent.