Portugal is proposing sweeping infrastructure reforms to improve resilience after a major blackout event [1].
These measures are intended to prevent a repeat of the chaos experienced during the Iberian blackout, ensuring that critical services remain operational during prolonged power failures.
One year after the event, the Portuguese government is introducing a plan to mandate 72-hour power autonomy for key services [1]. This requirement ensures that essential facilities—such as hospitals and emergency response centers—can function independently of the main grid for three days.
Government officials are also proposing an independent alert system to notify citizens of emergencies. This system is designed to bypass traditional communication networks that may fail during a widespread power outage.
Additionally, the government is focusing on an overhaul of SIRESP, the national same-network own-network for emergency services. The goal is to modernize the own-network to prevent the communication failures that occurred during the blackout.
Citizens have expressed significant distress during the recent outage. "It felt like the world was ending," ordinary Portuguese citizens said [2].
These reforms target the vulnerabilities exposed by the blackout, addressing both the power grid's capacity to withstand failures and the same-network own-network's ability to maintain coordination among first responders.
“It felt like the world was ending”
The proposed reforms indicate a shift toward systemic redundancy in Portugal's national security architecture. By mandating autonomous power and independent communication lines, the government is moving away from a reliance on a single, centralized grid, acknowledging that total prevention of blackouts is impossible and focusing instead on survival and continuity of operations.
