If the last few days has taught us anything, it should be that to pin all your hopes for a hassle-free life on one technology is misguided.

In recent years, we have had a blanket ban on chimneys in new houses.

Everything was to be electric: heating, cooking, lighting and the provision of water. All the everyday essentials of ordinary living were to be dependent on one energy source – electricity.

The use of coal, wood and oil that have met humankind’s needs for centuries was to be outlawed.

New housing estates have been constructed totally dependent on electricity, a dependence which recent days has shown to be unwarranted.

We have hotels around the country, but especially in the west and north east inundated with locals from their area driven from their homes because of lack of heating, cooking facilities, water and in some cases an inability to get a mobile phone connection because of damage to phone masts and that’s assuming the mobile phone was charged in the first place.

It’s clear that we need to revisit some of the more outlandish of recent building regulations.

Not allowing a chimney where an ordinary fire or stove could be installed and used defies common sense.

Nobody is harking back to distant days where the kettle brewed permanently on the hob beside the turf or log fire.

Modern appliances are more efficient and less polluting but the principle of having options is as valid today as it was 50 years ago.

Most commercial dairy farms have some kind of generator, either tractor-driven or independent stand-alone diesel powered to cope with power outages.

Livelihoods and animal welfare concerns depend on cows being milked and livestock having water to drink.

Human needs must also be taken into account – modern A-rated houses are complex and expensive to build with under-floor heating, heat pumps and sealed systems.

How feasible is it that these new builds be equipped with an emergency generator or that each estate have a communal facility, professionally linked into the main supply line?

The rush to renewables seems to have blinded us to the absolute necessity for a robust electricity distribution grid.

No system will be perfect in every situation but that must not prevent us from having fallback options to cope with these extremes.

It has been difficult not to have been struck by the determination of emergency crews to get through difficult working conditions to get people reconnected, but the timescale in some parts of the country is beyond what is acceptable.

Energy planning is a complex business – we have failed a key test.