When our neighborhood was new we had weekly power outages at the hottest time of the day. It had grown so fast, the power company couldn't supply the peak demand.
Anyway the trick I learned while we waited someplace cool with our new baby for the power to return, was to call our home. If the answering machine picked up, the power was on
It's an minor hassle when it's just you, but with a newborn it was a major pain in the ass. Our new A/C lost it's compressor with all the brown outs and outages, all we got were rate hikes.