The Day the Lights Went Out

How one power cut changed the way we think about resilience, energy and self-sufficiency

On 28 April 2025, the lights went out across Portugal and much of the Iberian Peninsula.

For us, it became a wake-up call.

We had experienced power cuts before. Living in the Serra de Monchique, outages are not particularly unusual, especially during wet and stormy weather. Normally the electricity disappears for a short while, we light a few candles, wait patiently and eventually everything comes back to life.

This time felt different.

Hours passed, and gradually we began to understand just how dependent modern life had become upon a continuous supply of electricity.

It wasn't simply that the lights didn't work.

We couldn't easily shop because supermarkets depended upon electricity for their tills, automatic doors, lighting and payment systems. Cash machines weren't working. Fuel stations couldn't pump fuel. Communications became difficult, and finding reliable information about what was actually happening was surprisingly hard.

Perhaps the most unsettling part was simply not knowing.

Was this a technical failure? A cyberattack? Something more serious? With communications disrupted and very little information available, our imaginations inevitably began filling in the gaps.

For the first time, we started asking ourselves a much more uncomfortable question:

What if the electricity doesn't come back on?

Prepared — but only for a while

Fortunately, our preparations for wildfire emergencies meant that we were not completely helpless.

We had small generators, so these were quickly brought into service. Our immediate priority was keeping the refrigerators and freezers running. We had food stored, and losing electricity for an extended period could have meant losing much of it.

The generators bought us time.

But they also revealed another weakness.

They needed fuel.

I realised that we might comfortably manage eight hours or perhaps considerably longer if we carefully rationed their use. But eventually our stored fuel would run out.

And if the petrol stations couldn't pump fuel because they didn't have electricity, what then?

A generator is only a solution for as long as you can feed it.

That simple realisation stayed with me.

When the power returned

Eventually, after many hours, the electricity returned.

There was an enormous sense of relief as appliances started humming again, lights came back on and communications were restored.

Life returned to normal remarkably quickly.

But our thinking didn't.

The blackout had exposed vulnerabilities that had always existed; we simply hadn't appreciated them.

We began looking around the farm differently.

How many refrigerators and freezers were we operating?

How much electricity did our pumps and other essential equipment require?

How would we cook?

How would we heat water?

How would we keep ourselves warm and dry during winter?

How long could we genuinely operate independently if the grid disappeared for several days rather than several hours?

These were no longer theoretical questions.

From backup power to energy resilience

Our conclusion was that we needed to make a significant change.

Rather than simply having generators available for emergencies, we wanted the ability to produce and store our own electricity.

We therefore decided to invest in a substantial solar system with enough battery storage to keep essential equipment operating through the night.

For us, this isn't about disconnecting from society or believing that the electricity grid is about to collapse.

It is about resilience.

There is an important difference.

A resilient household can absorb a shock without immediately becoming helpless. A resilient farm can continue protecting its food, pumping water and carrying out essential functions even when outside services temporarily fail.

And resilience rarely comes from relying upon a single solution.

Solar panels are useful, but sunshine is variable.

Batteries are useful, but their capacity is finite.

Generators are useful, but they require fuel.

Wood-burning stoves and wood-fired ovens are wonderfully simple technologies because locally produced firewood can provide heat and cooking independently of electricity.

Each system provides another layer of security.

Together, they create resilience.

Self-sufficiency suddenly meant something different

Perhaps the greatest consequence of that day was that it changed our understanding of self-sufficiency.

Growing vegetables, keeping animals and producing some of our own food are important parts of it, but genuine self-sufficiency goes much further.

It means thinking about water.

Energy.

Food preservation.

Cooking.

Heating.

Communication.

Fuel.

Tools.

Storage.

And, perhaps most importantly, what happens when one of those systems suddenly disappears.

The blackout made us think much more seriously about preserving the food we produce. Freezers are incredibly convenient, but a freezer full of food is also dependent upon a continuous supply of electricity.

That strengthened our interest in other methods of preservation — bottling, canning, drying, fermenting and storing foods that don't require constant refrigeration.

Again, the answer isn't necessarily to abandon modern technology.

It is to avoid becoming completely dependent upon it.

A lesson from the land

There is an interesting parallel here with regenerative agriculture.

Healthy natural systems rarely depend upon one thing.

A resilient soil has multiple pathways for storing and moving water. A diverse landscape contains many different plants, animals, fungi and microorganisms. If one part struggles, another can often compensate.

Fragile systems depend upon everything working perfectly.

Resilient systems expect things occasionally to go wrong.

The same principle can be applied to our homes and farms.

The blackout lasted hours rather than days, and ultimately little harm was done to us.

Yet those few hours taught us something valuable.

Convenience and resilience are not the same thing.

Modern infrastructure gives us extraordinary convenience. Electricity arrives through a cable. Water comes from a tap. Fuel comes from a pump. Food waits on supermarket shelves.

Because these systems work so reliably, it is remarkably easy to forget how dependent upon them we have become.

On 28 April 2025, for a few hours, that convenience disappeared.

When the lights eventually came back on, we decided that we wouldn't simply forget the lesson.

We would produce more of our own energy.

We would store more of it.

We would preserve more of our own food.

We would maintain alternative ways of cooking and heating.

And we would continue moving further towards self-sufficiency.

Sometimes it takes the lights going out to see things more clearly.