If US utilities were focused on reliability, they would have stopped putting power lines above ground a long time ago.

The power grid in the US is way more unreliable than any other country I've experienced, and I can only think that it's because the utilities are so profit-focused that they put lowering infrastructure costs above losing a little revenue due to power outages here and there. After all, the real societal costs due to unreliable power are completely externalized onto their customers.

The utilities are fine talking about reliability when it comes to newfangled competitors like solar, but that's mostly because they're a threat to their bottom line, not because they actually care about reliability.