Ericeira's Power Outages Were Declared Fixed in July. They Haven't Stopped

If the clock on your microwave keeps blinking when you wake up, you are not imagining it. Ericeira still has a power outage problem, months after it was officially declared solved.

At the Mafra Municipal Assembly in early July, Mayor Hugo Moreira Luís said grid operator E-Redes had finished reinforcing Ericeira's medium and low voltage network on 17 June, after work that began in March. The reinforcement, he said, had already reduced the impact of outages, and the risk of further supply failures was now minimal. We reported it at the time under the headline "Power outages in Ericeira resolved."

The outages did not get the memo. Ericeira.com keeps a live log of power cuts in town, recorded by a home in Ericeira that monitors its own supply. It shows the power going out again on 19 June, just two days after the work was finished. Then again on 21 July, on 6 September, on 9 September and on 24 September. That is five outages since the fix, and three in September alone.

Across 2026 so far the log counts 12 outages and more than two and a half hours without power in total, with the longest single cut lasting around 30 minutes. Most of the recent ones hit in the middle of the night, between 1am and 5am, which is why many people only notice them the next morning: a reset router, a blinking oven clock, a freezer that has been off for a while.

Short cuts like these are more than an annoyance. They reboot routers and servers, knock out alarms and gate motors, spoil food, and can damage electronics when the power comes back. For the growing number of people who work remotely from Ericeira, an outage at the wrong moment means a dropped call or lost work.

Part of the job is also still unfinished. According to the Mayor, the new transformer substation planned for Ericeira has not been installed, and there is no date for it because of problems getting the equipment. Until it is in place, the town is running on a grid that has been patched, not rebuilt.

It is hard to accept that a town on the edge of Lisbon, in a modern European country, loses power this often. E-Redes and the Câmara Municipal de Mafra should say publicly when the substation will be installed, and what else is being done in the meantime.

If your power goes out, report it to E-Redes, even if it comes back after a few minutes, on their breakdown line 800 506 506, free and open 24 hours. Every report on record makes the problem harder to ignore. You can follow every outage we log, and see whether the lights are on right now, on our Ericeira power outages page.