Our power is very reliable and rarely goes out. Every few years a car hits a pole or something and we get a brief period of quiet time
I actually had some electronics fail quite recently after a number of minor outages and speaking with insurance they were saying it's very common in certain areas where the infrastructure is aging or has recently been struck by lightening.
I have noticed the operating voltage in the inner north seems to vary between as low as 217V to 246V, but it's quite frequent you notice the lights dimming in houses round here. I don't think there were any last summer (if you could call it a summer) but usually I'd experience 2-5 (ish) complete outages on hot days, when I spoke to someone in know they said this is normal as they load shed you can experience short outages.
AusNet owns & maintains the transmission network in Victoria, but it is under the operational control of AEMO.
Dispatch of generation and FCAS instructions is NEM-wide and the responsibility of AEMO.
Outages are almost always due to faults in the local distribution network.
Power outages happen, but I've been through maybe half dozen in my time here.
Same with brown outs. Not unheard of but far from common.
Although I spend my days at the office so maybe I miss some things, but equally I get an email if my home UPS activates and that has happened perhaps twice.
Is that when entire states power (2gw) went from being produced to being consumed as a massive electric motor to 50k rpm and shooting into sky?
The Australian grid is at the forefront %age of renewable energy in the grid. This brings new challenges with it to which the answer is more batteries and more wind and solar.
There have been the rare cases of load shedding, usually when thermal generators are unexpectadely offline (one a few years ago was when a coal plant actually blew up).