Note: A number of people sent this to me. This is a fictional account of what might happen if we get a large solar event, such as a Coronal Mass Ejection, pointed directly at earth.
Given that we are truly an electric society, the havoc it would cause would be monumental. Few systems are hardened against an event like this. It would be like a nuclear EMP event, except worldwide.
When the ejection reaches the Earth as an ICME (Interplanetary CME), it may disrupt the Earth’s magnetosphere, compressing it on the day side and extending the night-side tail. When the magnetosphere reconnects on the nightside, it creates trillions of watts of power which is directed back toward the Earth’s upper atmosphere. This process can cause particularly strong aurora also known as the Northern Lights, or aurora borealis (in the Northern Hemisphere), and the Southern Lights, or aurora australis (in the Southern Hemisphere). CME events, along with solar flares, can disrupt radio transmissions, cause power outages (blackouts), and cause damage to satellites and electrical transmission lines.
Bye bye modern society. While the sun is quiet now, don’t discount the potential for something like this to happen. The likelihood of such an event is far greater than that of an asteroid strike. If it does happen, the only electronics likely to be working afterward are tube radios, and a 57 Chevy or earlier automobile. (no electronics, just electromechanical). – Anthony
Space storm alert: 90 seconds from catastrophe
From the New Scientist 23 March 2009 by Michael Brooks
IT IS midnight on 22 September 2012 and the skies above Manhattan are filled with a flickering curtain of colourful light. Few New Yorkers have seen the aurora this far south but their fascination is short-lived. Within a few seconds, electric bulbs dim and flicker, then become unusually bright for a fleeting moment. Then all the lights in the state go out. Within 90 seconds, the entire eastern half of the US is without power.
A year later and millions of Americans are dead and the nation’s infrastructure lies in tatters. The World Bank declares America a developing nation. Europe, Scandinavia, China and Japan are also struggling to recover from the same fateful event – a violent storm, 150 million kilometres away on the surface of the sun.
It sounds ridiculous. Surely the sun couldn’t create so profound a disaster on Earth. Yet an extraordinary report funded by NASA and issued by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in January this year claims it could do just that.
Over the last few decades, western civilisations have busily sown the seeds of their own destruction. Our modern way of life, with its reliance on technology, has unwittingly exposed us to an extraordinary danger: plasma balls spewed from the surface of the sun could wipe out our power grids, with catastrophic consequences.
The projections of just how catastrophic make chilling reading. “We’re moving closer and closer to the edge of a possible disaster,” says Daniel Baker, a space weather expert based at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and chair of the NAS committee responsible for the report.
It is hard to conceive of the sun wiping out a large amount of our hard-earned progress. Nevertheless, it is possible. The surface of the sun is a roiling mass of plasma – charged high-energy particles – some of which escape the surface and travel through space as the solar wind. From time to time, that wind carries a billion-tonne glob of plasma, a fireball known as a coronal mass ejection (see “When hell comes to Earth”). If one should hit the Earth’s magnetic shield, the result could be truly devastating.
The incursion of the plasma into our atmosphere causes rapid changes in the configuration of Earth’s magnetic field which, in turn, induce currents in the long wires of the power grids. The grids were not built to handle this sort of direct current electricity. The greatest danger is at the step-up and step-down transformers used to convert power from its transport voltage to domestically useful voltage. The increased DC current creates strong magnetic fields that saturate a transformer’s magnetic core. The result is runaway current in the transformer’s copper wiring, which rapidly heats up and melts. This is exactly what happened in the Canadian province of Quebec in March 1989, and six million people spent 9 hours without electricity. But things could get much, much worse than that.
Worse than Katrina
The most serious space weather event in history happened in 1859. It is known as the Carrington event, after the British amateur astronomer Richard Carrington, who was the first to note its cause: “two patches of intensely bright and white light” emanating from a large group of sunspots. The Carrington event comprised eight days of severe space weather.
There were eyewitness accounts of stunning auroras, even at equatorial latitudes. The world’s telegraph networks experienced severe disruptions, and Victorian magnetometers were driven off the scale.
Though a solar outburst could conceivably be more powerful, “we haven’t found an example of anything worse than a Carrington event”, says James Green, head of NASA’s planetary division and an expert on the events of 1859. “From a scientific perspective, that would be the one that we’d want to survive.” However, the prognosis from the NAS analysis is that, thanks to our technological prowess, many of us may not.
There are two problems to face. The first is the modern electricity grid, which is designed to operate at ever higher voltages over ever larger areas. Though this provides a more efficient way to run the electricity networks, minimising power losses and wastage through overproduction, it has made them much more vulnerable to space weather. The high-power grids act as particularly efficient antennas, channelling enormous direct currents into the power transformers.
The second problem is the grid’s interdependence with the systems that support our lives: water and sewage treatment, supermarket delivery infrastructures, power station controls, financial markets and many others all rely on electricity. Put the two together, and it is clear that a repeat of the Carrington event could produce a catastrophe the likes of which the world has never seen. “It’s just the opposite of how we usually think of natural disasters,” says John Kappenman, a power industry analyst with the Metatech Corporation of Goleta, California, and an advisor to the NAS committee that produced the report. “Usually the less developed regions of the world are most vulnerable, not the highly sophisticated technological regions.”
According to the NAS report, a severe space weather event in the US could induce ground currents that would knock out 300 key transformers within about 90 seconds, cutting off the power for more than 130 million people (see map). From that moment, the clock is ticking for America.
First to go – immediately for some people – is drinkable water. Anyone living in a high-rise apartment, where water has to be pumped to reach them, would be cut off straight away. For the rest, drinking water will still come through the taps for maybe half a day. With no electricity to pump water from reservoirs, there is no more after that.
There is simply no electrically powered transport: no trains, underground or overground. Our just-in-time culture for delivery networks may represent the pinnacle of efficiency, but it means that supermarket shelves would empty very quickly – delivery trucks could only keep running until their tanks ran out of fuel, and there is no electricity to pump any more from the underground tanks at filling stations.
Back-up generators would run at pivotal sites – but only until their fuel ran out. For hospitals, that would mean about 72 hours of running a bare-bones, essential care only, service. After that, no more modern healthcare.
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Ohioholic (12:54:29) :
Is this an image of a CME on the other side of the sun? I am not sure what this picture represents.
No, it is a ‘coronal streamer’, which is divider between two regions with oppositely directed magnetic field. See, e.g.: http://books.google.com/books?id=e87NI_o2AUUC&pg=PA248&lpg=PA248&dq=coronal+streamer&source=bl&ots=QiBfKgBxOE&sig=iIEZj4hpZGOtp0dV9geT-ENgOJ4&hl=en&ei=Ne_LSa6jMpGUsAOn5LSjCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result
Just when my investment portfolio looked like it was beginning to turn around…
The events described seem credible. But in this case I wonder if nature outranks humans as the greater threat. The scenarios of three or so decades ago had nuclear weapons as the cause. That would still make sense.
My understanding is that a few, strategically ground-based nuclear weapons, or a single, high-altitude burst would accomplish the same thing that the writer describes so well above.
From “How Stuff Works” http://science.howstuffworks.com/e-bomb.htm
If, as stated, an electromagnetic pulse is a catastophic event for developed countries, it would seem a natural choice for terrorists, who would love to see the Great Satan hoist on the petard of its own technology.
So many apocalyptic futures… so little time to keep track of them. A good one for fellow hand-wringers is Cormack McCarthy’s gruesome The Road)
Having worked in emergency management, and as an emergency planner during the late 1970’s into the early 1990’s I have some comments on the above.
Comparing a major CME to and EMP event is not entirely correct all though the distinction is mostly technical, and the differences in types and location of damage will not mean a great deal to the average citizen. EMP as mentioned above does most of its damage due to the induction of extremely high voltages with incredibly short rise times. Due to the very short rise times many protective systems are not capable of reacting fast enough to prevent over current/over voltage damage to the protected loads. Also inductive and capacitive coupling become very important at those very fast rise times and circuits that in more normal situations are isolated from each other couple strongly and one vulnerable conductor can couple power to otherwise isolated circuits. To protect against those very fast rise times you need fast acting circuits that include very low inductance (very short low impedence leads to ground) such as properly installed MOV’s and gas gap diodes on RF circuits.
As I understand the situation on the ground currents and induced currents on power lines they will in comparison to EMP pulses be very very slow rise time changes, (seconds or tenths of seconds compared to low nanosecond rise times on EMP generated currents and voltages).
The result of that difference simply means that the point of failure will be different.
One of the major causes of damage is actually the power of the system itself not the induced currents. The CME would induce a failure by over heating or shorting and the “power follow” as the electrical power in the system goes to ground will be what causes the damage. In some cases the action of the “protective circuit breakers” can actually trigger failure in other connected system as a drop out of load as these protective systems trip can suddenly imbalance the grid and cause either cascade failure as one system after another trips out to protect itself or the burn out of systems due to over load if they remain connected too long.
The net effect of the failures will be similar but not the same. I would have no concern about electronics in isolated systems like car ignitions as they are free floating systems and will rise and fall in potential with the local environment. The voltage rise times and induced currents will be very slow compared to the types of surges they are already designed to handle such as electrostatic discharge.
The same will not be the case with grid connected electronics or even non-power electrical conductors like fence lines, long distance above ground pipe lines, bridges and other large linear conductors. They will build substantial currents and may ground currents/voltages through unexpected paths like cat 5 data cables, which normally do not carry any significant power.
The social and structural impacts on society have been studied for years and the dire warnings can and will occur in some areas. In others chance circumstances will prevent major social upset and local initiative will rapidly move to correct problems.
Truckers will make available reefer trucks for emergency refridgerated storage of super market supplies and local authorities and even private business will offer up what aid they can to mitigate problems. In other areas due to local social conditions or lack of responsible leadership you will have social melt down as we saw in New Orleans. New Orleans was a well known problem in the 1970’s to emergency managers. It was commonly used as an example of an inevitable failure waiting to happen. When you live in a toilet bowl you should not be surprised that it fills with water when mother nature pushes down the chrome handle. (toilet bowl refers to the geological configuration that they built a city in a basin that sits below sea level, this is not a social judgment). That disaster was totally preventable and the responsibility lies with the local governments failure to make the most basic and elementary protective actions that were necessary and well known in the emergency management field for 30+ years. We were discussing all the problems they experienced in the emergency management field in the early 1980’s during the period when “crisis relocation planning” was being developed.
Much of the research done in the old Civil Defense program is still valid with very minor updates necessary and these same issues of the vulnerability of large population concentrations were well known decades ago. During a tour of the Dallas Texas Emergency Management center in about 1985, we discussed the critical impacts to large metropolitan areas. In their planning and exercise studies they came to the conclusion that the single most dangerous outage that they had to deal with was an interruption of water supply to the Dallas Ft. Worth area. This was usually triggered in their planning scenarios due to major power problems and critical failures of key infrastructure nodes like the large one off power transformers that can have 2-3 year lead times to replace.
Some of these problems can be “worked around” by cannibalizing functioning equipment to bring up critical infrastructure power to hospitals, pumping stations etc. But once this sort of scavenging has been done, you are in a long slow recovery cycle where to recover A you must get B to work so you can get C to work so you can manufacture D, which is essential to build E which A must have to function.
Like Ice storm damage, it can take weeks or months to fully recover just a problem that covers a couple states. If the impacts cover entire regions or hemispheres your recovery times will more resemble recovery from WWII in Europe and Japan than any thing we have seen recently and will take a decade or more to resolve.
Much of this is covered in the following publications:
The Effects of Nuclear War
May 1979
NTIS order #PB-296946
http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/7906/790601.pdf
Economic and social consequences of nuclear attacks on the United States:
Publisher: Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress (March 1979)
Study for the Joint Committee on Defense Production 96th Congress
Author Arthur Katz
(I have not found an online source for the above document but it is the parent document for the “Effects of Nuclear War” which is something of an executive summary for the general public of the Congressional Report.)
There were other specialty studies done in the Civil Defense on every imaginable subject, such as emergency feeding, expedient antibiotic production, emergency water supply etc. that are still largely valid.
The vulnerability of our phone and data switching networks is a different issue, and except for a few graphic examples due to fires in switching centers, is largely not well known to the general public, and will someday result in a large scale collapse due to this sort of issue.
Larry
My cousin is an electrical engineer at a nuclear plant. Here are his comments about this article:
Not all the transformers would be “blown” when the first one goes, the rest will automatically shut down. There is a breaker fail system of carrier signals and checkback systems that open ring bus breakers in switchyards that would attempt to automatically shut down the grid. True, plants need hours to shut down, but when there is a trip, the unit is off nearly instantly, quicker than you can blink. Any instant heating in the transformer creates gas bubbles in the transformer which is monitored by sudden pressure micro switches that trip breakers and isolate the transformer. Big transformers also have temperature trips that anticipate problems and provide alarms, trips, or both.
Sounds like the problem may be that the first ones would be plenty of them. The big transformers I have worked on in the last 10 years have all been made in Spain. Now the weight of these is about 400,000 lbs without the fittings, oil, or fans. The article claims a week to change one out, I have done it in 24 hours when I was in Virginia. Problem is, then we had crews that put transformers in all the time. I have been involved in over 35 transformers initial energization rated over 100 million watts, up to 1.1 billion watts, with high side voltages up to 750,000 volts. The generating plants have breakers that are tested and must operate within 1/4 cycle, or one fourth of one sixtieth of a second. There may be some major blackouts, but functional systems could be back on line within days. Some places may be months, but I believe they would rob transformers from other areas to share the pain. The utility is not going to let the country have power while the big rate payers are out of electric, just not good business. We have spare transformers at the nuclear plant, and are ordering another to increase plant power beyond the capability of the existing transformer and that would provide the current transformer as an available spare. The delivery time is 14 months.
My conclusion is that this is NASA and they want their old failing satellite replaced and do not have funding, so we need a problem to scare Obama into providing funding.
The modern diesel-electric locomotives built from the ’90s on have microprocessor controls. It’s not clear from the discussion above whether this solar storm would affect electronics or just high-tension lines and transformers, or how much in-between, but if electronics were fried, I don’t think you could run the locomotive prime movers (as the big diesel engines are called). If you could round up some older diesel locomotives, which still run on many American and Canadian short lines, those might still provide emergency power, at least until the fuel ran out. But hey, you can tote fuel with horse and cart.
Note, though, that those older diesel-electric locos are DC, not AC, which has only become common in the last decade or so.
What this all points up is the imminent folly of diverting trillions of dollars to “fight climate change,” a chimera if ever there were one, when there are real dangers to our complex industrial civilization that can be either prevented or minimized with the proper allocation of resources.
Since the potential threat to our electrical grid, communications systems, and electronically-controlled vehicles and machinery comes not only from a possible solar storm, but from a possible EMP attack by an enemy, it would clearly make sense to begin ‘hardening’ these systems against such eventualities (the military already has begun, reportedly), first with a backbone infrastructure, then by gradually replacing consumer items with ‘harder’ ones, as the old ones wear out.
The other potential threat is from meteorites, of asteroid or cometary origin. The danger may seem remote, but we are not far from having the ability to divert or destroy a near-Earth object heading for a collision, and that ability should be made a reality.
Instead we have fools talking about seeding the oceans with iron filings, or building shields in orbit to cool the Earth, all based on the hysterical notion that we are on the verge of imminent catastrophe from a little CO2. Talk about misplaced priorities!
/Mr Lynn
The important object is the ‘active region’ [magnetic field] and that is the same. It may have a speck/spot on and off.
so the same region can produce specks/spots from different cycles? or would you consider a reverse polarity spot part of cycle 24?
BTW Lief, thanks for your patience with my trivial questions 🙂
Bill P: “The U.S. military has been pursuing the idea of an e-bomb for decades, and many believe it now has such a weapon in its arsenal”
They got it! His name is Al !! If he succeeds it will paralyze EVERYTHING
In coastal areas the U.S. Navy can and has in the past provided emergency shore power from Navy ships. They could provide sufficient emergency power to support critical infrastructure like communications, hospitals and minimal street lighting etc.
There are work arounds for all these problems if the bureaucracy gets out of the way and lets people who have the resources help their neighbors.
You could run emergency services for weeks on fuel already stock piled in storage tanks at construction sights, air fields, refiners fuel farms etc. You would likely need to restrict private travel to some degree and force people to use buses in the core city areas to maximize passenger miles/gallon but all that has been done before.
Pumping fuel from gas station fuel tanks is easily handled by bringing portable generators to the station until its tanks are pumped dry then moving on to others.
Spontaneous communications nets will pop up on CB and Ham radio to help people find open fuel stations and commercial radio and TV will shift to public info broad casting of critical info at certain times of the day. You might have a situation where at 30 min after the hour a station would broad cast locations of emergency public water supply points and similar critical information. As has been done in the past, rolling blackouts can be used to stretch available power to all areas or provide people locations that they can recharge batteries for cell phones or other essential services.
People are very inventive. During the war in Bosnia they showed pictures of personal hydro plants folks had built with automotive alternators tethered in the river to provide DC power to shore.
What happens in the real world is in most locations people tackle the problems that they have the skills and resources to handle. Pedestrians step into intersection with flash lights to direct traffic during black outs. People with portable generators let their neighbors run their refrigerator off the portable gen set for a couple hours each day. People drag out the camping coolers and charcoal grill and cook food in the drive way in freezing temps. Neighbors gather in the one home that has a fire place and everyone sleeps in the living room where they have heat and the safety of the group.
This sort of a situation would be a major wake up call to many folks who have lost touch with the world and have no technical skills but the local red-neck mechanic will become god as he makes magic things happen with pieces parts scavenged from cars that don’t work.
People who regularly camp and fish would hardly notice many of the problems as they would simply switch to “vacation mode” and get by with what they have.
The real problems would be the medically vulnerable who depend on outside support to survive like diabetics, those who use oxygen therapy, and those on the edge that need regular medication. That would make the very young and the old and disabled the most vulnerable sub groups of the population.
Larry
Bill P (14:45:16) :
Just when my investment portfolio looked like it was beginning to turn around…
……
So many apocalyptic futures… so little time to keep track of them. A good one for fellow hand-wringers is Cormack McCarthy’s gruesome The Road)
And if you want to read the mother of them all, a truly awesome apocalyptic work, that will make you laugh and cry at the same time, try *A Canticle for Lebowitz*. Its a classic.
tallbloke (08:50:53) :
beng (07:37:35) :
David XKE (01:36:39) :
The transformers are at risk because massive disruptions in the Earth’s magnetic fields will induce DC (or near DC) currents in the long wire / ground circuit. This DC current shifts the transformer’s normally symmetrical B-H hysterisis path to one centered on the DC current. The magnetic fields caused by the AC current in the transformer follow this B-H hysterisis path. If the DC current is large enough, the B-H hysterysis path will enter saturation with peak AC current. When saturation is reached the transformer inductance drops sharply allowing the transformer current to spike.
A transformer that has been dropped from the line will not have a problem, no AC current. Solutions can include systems which detect the presence of near DC ground currents shutting down the transformer, systems that temporarly shed load when the initial warning is received, or increasing the ammount of iron in the transformer to minimize saturation.
I suspect the power distribution companies are aware of the problem and have begun making contincency plans. After all, the industry has known about this since problem 1989 and the IEEE (Institute of Electrical ans Electronic Engineers) has had numerous papers on this subject published in it’s journals.
A more realistic probability will be that weakest large transformers will fail. When they fail, the grid will go down (like it did in Ohio a few years back). Once down, the bulk of the infrastructure will be safe. It may take a week or two before the grid is restored given the large number of tripped breakers that will occur and the time needed to restart the power plants. Additional failures will occur over time and after the grid is restored. These failures will occur in transformers damaged during the storm.
I suspect the scare article is over hyping the issue in the same way the Y2K bug was hyped. The engineers who were actually working the Y2K problem knew it wasn’t an issue. It was the consultants, the press, the politicians, managers and other engineers (engineers who weren’t in the detail loop) who blew it up into a crisis.
AndyR (05:06:33) :
This doom and gloom scenario will only effect the USA and possibly Canada. This is because of the mickey mouse electrical distribution system held together by Mc Gyver’s bit of string and chewing gum.
And they apparently build their houses out of wood ???
Chewing gum is not distributed in Mickey Mouse land. No one notices, but you can’t buy a stick of Wrigley’s anywhere in the Magic Kingdom®.
And yes, we build our houses out of wood. It’s our own special way of sequestering carbon.
Craig James (15:48:25) :
Well said, I didn’t see your post before posting mine. Thanks.
Craig James (15:48:25) :
My cousin is an electrical engineer at a nuclear plant. Here are his comments about this article:
well you forgot one thing when the nuke shuts down it will not ” pop ” back on line.
AND no load IS worse than an overload!
They just don’t get it Tim they have no clue.
I didn’t see _one_ mention (I did a text search for it) that given some notice the so-called ‘grid’ could be/would be ‘islanded’ (literally, segments disconnected into islands) to reduce the length of any particular system interconnect (‘transmission lines’) and therefore provide a better chance that those LARGE transformers would not see the slow, shifting ‘ground currents’ which tend to shift the iron core transformer’s BH (Flux density and Field Intensity) curve decidedly to one side thereby putting the core into saturation during a portion of the applied 60 (or 50) Hz energy …
Space Weather Effects on Power Transmission Systems: The Cases of Hydro-Québec and Transpower New ZealandLtd
http://www.springerlink.com/content/u34667055370236t/
To put things in perspective (WE WILL SURVIVE), how about:
“150 Years of Geomagnetic Effects” courtesy of Space Weather Canada
History
http://www.spaceweather.gc.ca/se-chr1-eng.php
A couple excerpts:
1840s – Barlow (1848) was the first person to make systematic observations of the “Spontaneous Electrical Currents observed in the Wires of the Electric Telegraph”:
“When the telegraph instruments are not working, the batteries are put out of circuit, and the wires remain with a simple earth connection at both extremities.
It was in this condition of the wires that spontaneous currents were observed to arise in them, producing occasionally large deflections in the needles. These deflections were sometimes to the right and sometimes to the left; at times they changed rapidly from right to left, at others they continued in one direction from periods varying from a few minutes to one or more hours.
My attention was strongly drawn to the subject by the constancy of these effects, when a circumstance occurred which imparted a new interest to the inquiry. On the evening of the 19th of March, 1847, a brilliant aurora was seen, and during the whole time of its remaining visible, strong alternating deflections occurred on all the instruments. Similar effects were observed also on the telegraphs on several other lines of railway.”
1970’s – The effects on power systems in Canada were summarised by Acres (1975):
1. Newfoundland and Labrador Power Commission, St. John’s, Newfoundland The Corner Brook transformer tripped on differential relay (IAC, no harmonic restraint) and was returned to service several times. Long Harbour Terminal tripped as above twice.
2. Hydro-Québec, Montréal, Québec
MW variations of a few per cent. Bersimis No. 2, on power-frequency control, had MW variation of 90 per cent. Significant variations of Mvars at all generating stations. Voltage variations of 3.6 per cent (735 kv sending end) to 5.7 per cent (315 kv receiving end). Shunt capacitor bank tripped off by overload protection at 1852 hours EDT on August 4.
3. Ontario Hydro, Toronto, Ontario
Drop in power on the Ontario – Michigan interconnection from 540 to 480 Mw, and on the Ontario – New York State interconnection from 310 to 280 Mw. Voltage variations of up to 8 per cent. and a change in system frequency from 60.00 to 60.03 hertz.
4. Manitoba Hydro, Winnipeg, Manitoba
Fluctuations on the U.S.A. Tie Line (La Verendrye) from 120 to 164 to 44 Mw and +25 to -100 Mvar. Drop in voltage at Grand Rapids, La Verendrye, Morden, Parkdale and Selkirk.
At la Verendrye, SIC > 100 amp in neutral of 230/115-kv transformer and at Grand Rapids, SIC ~ 100 amp in transformer. System frequency varies from 60.00 to 59.95 to 60.08 hertz.
Seven Sisters Unit No. 2 (25 Mw) tripped by generator field ground and overcurrent time A and C phase relays. Slave Falls Unit No.3 (9 Mw) tripped by undervoltage relay. Load Dispatch requested all generator units to maximum voltage boost at 1755 hours CDT, hoping to prevent loss of additional generator unit.
Stuart Clark’s “The Sun Kings” described the CME of 1859 and we had a near miss during 2003 as well.
I wonder how long it will take for science to realise that space weather causes the Earth’s weather.
Gee I might ve vindicated during my own lifetime.
I skipped most of the comment but here goes.
1) Any EMP capable of making a significant electrical pulse is going to be quite rapid, therefore a Faraday cage will be effective protection..
2) Any electrical effect on the network will be countered by 2 things
a) Power is transmitted on a 3 phase system + neutral All 4 lines will be affected in the same direction! No DC current through transformers then!
b) The network will trip very rapidly from the shift in neutral.
There may be some serious arcing over relays cutting out the system, but nothing too disastrous I think.
Military hardware is EMP ‘hardened’ whether this is applicable to domestic equipment is moot.
DaveE.
Came across this in my studies a few years back; this is part of the “PJM State and Member Training Department” training program for a ‘system operator’ with this particular set of training slides dealing with:
Weather and Environmental Emergencies
http://www.pjm.com/Media/training/core-curriculum/ip-ops-101/ops101-weatheremer.pdf
Shown/explained are:
1) GICs – “Geomagnetic or Ground induced current” flows that occur from the earth into the grounded neutral of a three phase wye connected transformer, where it divides evenly in eachphase of the transformer. The GIC then proceeds into transmission lines and flows to other transformers, returning from them to earth.
2) Procedures for identifying and confirming the existance of a Solar Magnetic Disturbance
3) Mitigating procedures for dealing with solar-induced GICs
4) Picture of destroyed transformer that was harmed during a GIC event.
My point is, these system ‘operators’ are not ignorant nor unprepared for the occurance of these phenoma (now!) … other system operators have similar detailed procedures that their personnel follow to identify and mitigate (and protect their systems!) the effects of solar influences like GICs.
There’s video of a CME off the back of the sun recorded by the LASCO coronagraph on SOHO in 12/96. The size and power is mind boggling. It was aimed away from earth out toward Jupiter. In the background of the image field is the Milky Way of the galactic center in Saggitarius for a humbling cosmic juxtapostion. It can be found at the Stanford Solar Center website. This all reminds me of Aesop’s fabled fly on the chariot wheel declaring…”O what a dust I raise!”
Just because someone is aware of the problem and/or potential for damage doesn’t mean they actually did anything about it.
Sounds like something that gets risk managed into a paper shoved into a folder collecting dust.
I would expect a highly critical installation such as a nuke plant would be prepared, they have to be.
The rest of the infrastructure would likely not be.
That’s the world we live in.
Steve M. (16:11:10) :
so the same region can produce specks/spots from different cycles? or would you consider a reverse polarity spot part of cycle 24?
A given region belongs to the same cycle all the time. But the region often twists and turns and sometimes so much that is looks like a reversed polarity region.
Joseph (06:12:05) :
If a calamity such as this were to occur, with all electrical power and most transportation wiped out in our country, does anyone really think that people are going to stay nice and polite, help their neighbor and work together to rebuild anything? Har, har! Think “Mad Max”.
Ooh! Ooh! I call dibs on Lord Humungous!
How about siphoning the gas from the fried cars to fill the generators? Or would the generators be fried too?
My guess is that a bit of redesign with regular breakers, equivalent to household fuses, would solve this at least for keeping the grid going. That could be done as part of normal maintenance over a number of years without much extra cost. Not something to panic about, as we did with Y2K but something to do.
Look, let me kill once and for all the idea that this type of event could kill your car or cell phone or even aeroplane. I’ll do it using science and actual calculations with numbers if that’s ok with everyone.
OK, let say we’re in northern Canada. This part of the world has the highest magnetic field from the earth, a whopping 60uT = 60e-6T according to Wikipedia. OK, we’re in Canada so we’ve bought ourselves a big American gas guzzler, say a GMC Suburban, which measures 5 metres by 2. (Canada’s metric, I believe!) OK, the biggest loop that a current could circulate in the car has an area of 5 * 2 = 10m^2.
OK, the flux through this area is 60e-6 * 10 = 6e-4 Wb.
Let’s say a CME comes along and the whole magnetic field collapses to nothing in one second.
The emf generated around our loop is 6e-4Wb / 1s = 0.6 millivolts. Even a British car with Lucas electrics will survive that.
Let’s be clear than, this is an effect limited to huge power distribution systems, not small isolated systems. The distribution system has a much bigger loop area, the the flux is much greater. Furthermore, because all the power received at consumers has passed through several transformers, it isn’t going to fry the telly either. The type of fault current in the article can’t get through a transformer.
I still think the electricity distribution protection kit will shut it all down, and we will only be slaves to Tina Turner’s Thunderdome army for, at most, a few hours.