Electrical Surges in St. Matthews (appliances, house, live)

[treehugger72]

I just moved to St. Matthews and I've heard that there can be frequent electrical outages here. I've already momentarily lost electricity here once since I moved in a couple weeks ago. I'm trying to make sure that I have adequate surge protection but am confused by all the conflicting info I've received. Can a longtime SM resident please tell me:
1. Is an electrical surge that could damage home appliances a rare ocurrence or a real possibility?
2. Does LG&E offer any kind of whole house protection? (They said they don't but an electrician said they do?)
3. If you've had a surge, did your surge protectors save your appliances? Do you know what kind of protector worked for you and what joule protection it offered?

Any help you can offer would be appreciated.

[louroclou]

We've lived in St Matthews for four years. We have Insight broadband, telephone, and cable.
The big outages have brought us down a few times, but overall, no real problems. I doubt it's worse than anywhere else.

[colinhayes]

when I lived on Cannons between frankfort and lexington, I almost never saw an outage, even during the wind and ice storms. Of course my house was a block from Northup's and only a couple more from Jerry's...