I think the whole world already knows that two first-world European countries - Portugal and Spain - were COMPLETELY without power for most of a day.

The problem started in Spain (apparently they have been trying to integrate their photovoltaic farms into the grid and that went really bad) and because at the time we were importing about 30% of our energy needs from Spain (for the simple reason that with Spain being 1 hour ahead of us and thus having more sun, it was cheaper than using our own power stations) it spread to Portugal.

There was a huge fluctuation in Spanish high voltage lines which caused power stations to automatically turn themselves off to protect the grid rather than become overloaded, and because it was all automatic, they all fell like dominoes, one after the other. With us connected to Spain (we would have been fine otherwise) Portugal went dark as well.

Unprecedented.

Lately there are things happening in real life that I thought only happened in sci-fi movies (global pandemics with lock downs, whole countries without power, tsunamis, etc).

I woke up at 11:30 with my three UPSs beeping at me (two 2200 VA units + one 1000 VA unit). At first I didn't know what was happening, but soon enough I started getting messages that this was not a local thing I could ride out and that several locations in Portugal were also without power.

Then the reports came that Spain was also without power, and that France and Italy had been affected too. At this point I feared we were actually under attack and that this was only the first step in whatever was coming.

Once I realized this was not something I could ride out even with the 2200VA UPSs (one powers my PC, the other the two 43" monitors and the smaller one misc peripherals, so I have about 2 and a half hours of autonomy) I shutdown the PC and turned everything off, then charged my cell phone to max using the power stored in the UPSs, Once that was done, I powered the UPSs off too - by now there were rumors that it could take several days for power to be restored so the UPS batteries would come in handy to keep my cell phone alive for several days if necessary.

At this point people started panicking a bit, some buildings and places had no water (no pumps), traffic lights were off, workers were sent home en masse generating massive queues in public transportation, cars could not be refueled because the gas pumps are electrical, ATMs were down so people could not get money, without money you could not pay for things at the few hypermarkets that had their own emergency power generators and were still open, etc...

I was fine at home because I am a bit of a prepper, so I have plenty of canned food, water, milk, etc, here... Enough to keep me going for at least a month or more lol

Most people, however, do not, so there were huge queues in the few supermarkets that were still open, some people were desperate because they had nothing to eat and could not pay because bank cards were not working, and restaurants were all closed too. Even so pretty soon all supermarkets were empty of canned foods, bottled water and toilet paper lol

Unlike most people I normally also re-fill my gas tank as soon as it gets half empty, so even though I did not have as much fuel in the tank as I would like, I still had enough for about 200-250 Km, enough to run for the hills if necessary eheh (I would have topped it up the day before but I was tired so I figured I would do it the next day, which is when the blackout happened - let that be a lesson, "never put off until tomorrow what you can do today" lol).

What surprised me the most, however, is actually the amount of things that KEPT ON WORKING even in a total power outage. Hospitals, emergency services, some supermarkets, some pharmacies, TV stations never stopped transmitting (although people could only see them on their phones via streaming, as there was no power for actual TVs eheh) and most telecommunications were up too even though with severe disruptions and depending on the area (although they did start failing towards the middle of the day).

My telecommunications provider fortunately stayed up all the time, so I was able to stream TV news to my phone nearly till the end (I ended up falling asleep and woke up around 9:30 PM with the sound of the UPS relays kicking in because power was back).

I like to think that God works in mysterious ways. I sincerely believe this was a warning or some kind of drill to Portuguese and Spanish people, for them to prep up to what is or might be coming (and when it does it won't be a single day without power, it will be much longer).

Thanks to this now we know what we actually need if power goes out - money at home, water, canned food, battery powered radio, batteries, candles, matches, torches, full gas tank (someone I know reported on FB how impressed he was with the number of cars abandoned on the shoulder of highways because gas stations were all closed and they had ran out of fuel).

Personally I learned I was missing a few things too: I already knew about the money since ATMs would be out of order but I still had none at home (I do now), have plenty of batteries but did not actually have a battery operated radio (do now) and I am also going to buy a small barbecue grill and some coal (even though I do have a portable butane stove and a handful of butane cans): I was eating cold salad with sea food, eggs and mayo for lunch while some of my neighbors - I live in a small building - were barbecuing delicious steaks on their balconies... oh the envy! lol

Anyway, Portugal only had two power stations were power could be restored from a blank state (i.e. like starting a car engine without a starter motor). This is one of the reasons why it took so many hours for power to be restored. Also, they had to do it slowly, area by area, so as not to upset the grid and have it all come crashing down again.

There are some very serious lessons we can take out of this, both on a personal level for people as well as at a country/government level, as to what we are doing trying to force the use of so called "green" energy rather than the more reliable classic alternatives.

Fortunately this only lasted a few hours, had it lasted for more than a day things would have began to take a much more serious turn.

In the (controlled) chaos some good things also happened: neighbors from across the street finally talking to each other through their windows, children playing outside, neighbors helping those who needed, and since there was no power and the weather was good, many people simply decided to go to the beach.

I live in a rural part of California, which is not known for a overly reliable power grid. Mostly due to the power lines all being overhead in an area with an abundance of tall trees. High winds in the summer and snow in the winter can cause trees to interact with the power lines, sometimes in numerous places in the same basic timeframe. We've had power out for 5 days at least once since we've lived here. The good news is we have a generator and a power wall (it was provided free of charge by the power company to say "Sorry we suck at keeping your power on"). The power wall will 6-8 hours of electricity to basically let the house (it's a small house) run normally. The generator will keep the pellet stove (our heat source) and refrigerator running for as long as we have gas for it, and in an emergency we can syphon gas out of the car's gas tank to keep the generator running longer than the 10 gallons the gas can will hold, but even the 10 gallons will last longer than any power outage we've had. That said, after about 12 hours we'll lose internet because the internet provider's repeater station battery will die. And there is no cell signal where we live, so we'll have to make do with reading or playing board games or something. Our cooking range is gas, so we have the ability to cook regardless of power.

At least you are prepared for extended power outs. Now imagine whole cities filled with unprepared people with no generators or means to conserve and cook their food (or even buy more). Not sure what would happen after a couple of days without power, but it probably would not be pretty.

Yeah, that's a scary scenario. Here we know we're going to have extended power outages, so we prepare for it.