The guy I met who did the work at TBell didn't say where he got the stuff, but any ac guy could put a time delay restart on each ac. Set the delay at 5 minutes and you can be reasonably sure that no ac will short cycle and hang up.
http://www.johnstonesupply.com/corp/tabid/1783/default.aspx?product_group=1205 This page shows one model, with different operating voltages.
They would not be wired the usual way, which is to prevent restart after power failure, but rather restart after compressor cycling. Most larger commercial units have intelligent delay relays built-in, but older home units like you have didn't have them.
On commercial split systems the thermostat feeds are all sent to the lockout relay. If you know what an electric zone sprinkler system timer looks like you can visualize what happens.
Lets say you have 4 ac's. You get a 4 zone timer and run the low voltage thermostat leads to each zone relay. Zone 1 is 1-2-3, Zone 2 is 1-2-4, Zone 3 is 2-3-4, Zone 4 is 1-3-4.
In each case only 3 ac's operate at a time and the length of time each zone is on is adjustable. No matter which zone is on, one ac is locked out. This type of relay must be "make before break" to prevent all the ac's from going off between zone changes.
You could even do it yourself with a 120v 4-zone electronic sprinkler timer if you had access to each low voltage thermostat wire.