What We Can Do About Massive Solar Flares

Reader resistant sends in an update to our discussion a month back on the possibility of violent space weather destroying power grids worldwide during the upcoming solar cycle. Wired is running an interview with Lawrence Joseph, author of "Apocalypse 2012: A Scientific Investigation into Civilization's End," and John Kappenman, CEO of electromagnetic damage consulting company MetaTech. The piece brings two new threads to the discussion: the recently discovered presence of an unusually large hole in Earth's geomagnetic shield, magnifying our vulnerability, and possible steps we can take over the next few years to make the power grid more robust against solar flares and coronal mass ejections. There's also that whole Mayan 2012 thing. Quoting John Kapperman: "What we're proposing is to add some fairly small and inexpensive resistors in the transformers' ground connections. The addition of that little bit of resistance would significantly reduce the amount of the geomagnetically induced currents that flow into the grid. In its simplest form, it's something that might be made out of cast iron or stainless steel, about the size of a washing machine. ...we think it's do-able for $40,000 or less per resistor. That's less than what you pay for insurance for a transformer. [In the US] there are about 5,000 transformers to consider this for. ... We're talking about $150 million or so. It's pretty small in the grand scheme of things."

Comments

EU safe?

[AigariusDebian]

As far as I know, the electrical grid in most of EU have always been protected against that. When government companies manage the grid according to set technical standards, it mostly is better managed than private contractors, that build as little as possible and as cheap as possible.

What's the actual problem?

[SamMichaels]

Unless I missed it, TFA left out the technical details of the problem and was filled with FUD language instead.

From what I saw on wiki, it's a quasi-DC current. Why can't we just install massive inductors that give high impedance to 60hz and pass DC? Wouldn't that cost less than $45k? Don't we already have static drain chokes? How does this affect current lightning protection shunts (or when they say the protection circuits pop, is that to what they're referring)?

Linemen chime in!

Re:What's the actual problem?

[PPH]

No. Not inductors. Ideally, we want to provide the 60 Hz currents a low impedance path to ground, but block the DC currents. DC currents saturate iron core devices (transformers, generators, etc.) and can cause damage. Resistors limit both AC and DC currents, which is a trade-off. Ideally, a capacitor could block DC but allow AC to pass. But capacitors suitable for these voltage levels are VERY expensive.

In reality, simply adding resistors here and there is not the total answer. Although the DC currents will be reduced, the resistors can only dissipate power for a short time. And while they do so, they create a DC voltage drop which itself can cause equipment failure. What is needed is the addition of DC current sensing and protective relaying to trip breakers and protect the system. Sure, you'll have an outage. But one that may only last hours or a few days. Not the weks or months it will take to repair damage. Few utilities implement this kind of sensing, and then only on major lines. So they can't characterize their systems' DC current components during either 'normal' operations or solar storms.

Re:There's only one solution

[RiotingPacifist]

surely there is nothing to stop a +5 offtopic (-1 offtopic, +4 underrated)

Is my off-line data safe?

[Cow Jones]

At the risk of having my geek card revoked, I'll admit that I don't know zilch about solar flares and their impact on electronics. What concerns me the most is how my stored data will be affected. Hardware can be replaced, but data is volatile and (I presume) also susceptible to the sun's random bursts.

Will by HDDs keep their data? Is it important whether they're connected to the grid at the time of the flaare? Can solar flares harm optical media?

What good are backups on magnetic media (tape or disks or otherwise) if a single large flare could wipe them all out?

Please tell me I'm worrying about nothing...

CJ

Re:Solar flares, eh?

[db32]

I had to Google "solar flare crystal planet" and the #1 hit was your post... #2 was Starflight...

Congratulations... You have made such an obscure reference that the first search result was you actually making the reference... I don't think there is actually a prize for that though... Please don't kill yourself...

Solar Cycle #24 is 2 years late!

[cdn-programmer]

Solar Cycle #24 is about 2 years late and the sun is unusually quiet. We really don't need to worry much about solar flares. The thing is when solar cycles are late this means the next solar cycle typically is very quiet. Solar Cycle #25 has already been predicted to also be very quiet.

So for the next 20 years solar flares may be practically non-existent.

What this means is that we can expect an increase in high energy cosmic radiation.

Expect more bit flips in circuitry.

Expect shorted and cooler summers and longer more intense winters. This is due to the increased cosmic radiation creating nucleation points for water vapor condensation which will increase cloud cover. Increased cloud cover reflects more energy into space so the surface cools.

Anyone who is perceptive might note this is the opposite of global warming.