I've seen a lot of posts about similar issues without solutions, but I was told to post here anyway, so here goes.
I'm playing solo, and I've got a region with two cities right now. One of them has an advanced fusion reactor and therefore a power surplus in the neighborhood of 2000MW. When I started the other city, rather than build a power plant, I tried to just purchase power from the neighboring city. It told me I could, but the power never made it to my second city. The roads leading to city #2 show yellow right up to the border and then it's red, even when it claims I'm able to buy (when I look it says "using 0MW of 1974MW available" or something to that effect). I'm able to share things like police, fire, trash collection, etc., but for some reason I can't purchase electricity.
So, I broke down and built a solar farm. I now have more than 200MW surplus in my second city, but I still lose power regularly (several times each month in game-time) and for no apparent reason and I end up having to bulldoze half my buildings.
Hoping for some guidance.
Jeremy