I live in the city and here all power cables are buried underground so power is very reliable. We basically never have blackouts, the few ones we have are usually because of planned maintenance in the middle of the night (we get a letter in the mail stating when it will be well in advance). That maybe happens once a year. There are no spikes or surges at all and no brownouts. I heard on TV that the cities are well protected because the power companies install their own surge protectors here to protect their own gear and the customers kind of get it for free because of this.
My parents live about 15km (10 miles) outside of Gothenburg and their reliability is a bit worse because the main power lines are carried in the air on poles to the area were they live. So they can get blackouts and brownouts (if they loose just one phase of three) and spikes during heavy thunderstorms and under heavy snowfall (trees fall on the powerlines).
They've never lost anything electrical because of the power during the 25 years they've lived there though, although two 2400 baud modems were destroyed due to spikes on the phone lines during thunderstorms when I was younger and lived at home.
