When I joined Sparq to service the needs of ENERGEX in Brisbane (Australia), a previous spate of power supply failures in both Brisbane and its suburbs (mostly during summer storm season) had led to more money being made available for the purpose of rectifying the problem. Some of that money allowed myself and LEXECORP to be taken on as a contractor working on the Distribution Management System (DMS).
Here in Bangalore, power can fail in the middle of a normal day. And on occasion it can happen quite frequently. It can make shopping in the local supermarket quite interesting. People here do not have the tendency of Brisbanites to all start playfully screaming :-)
One will note that expensive home devices (fridges, TVs, aircon units) have a range of strange devices (either as standalone or wall units) sat between them and the regular 240V supply. 
They are electronic voltage stabilizers. It’s not something we see in Brisbane and I will simply let the Power Engineers out there pass comment on them and their exciting qualities ;-)
Like ENERGEX, here we have the Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (BESCOM) which is equally government owned. It is news here that load shedding (an issue at ENERGEX) has been introduced again in the state (FYI that is Karnataka) as demand has again outstripped supply.
A little research reveals that present demand is 115 million units (MU) with supply at 100MU – a shortage of 15 to 20%. I wonder how the figures compare to ENERGEX and South East Queensland! I think we should be grateful that things are now pretty stable in Brisbane – and I know some of the guys who enabled this :-)
