http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328505.200-earth-in-for-bumpy-ride-as-solar-storms-hit.html Is it time to retire the dinosaur of the distributed power networks?
What does this guy mean with "transformers consume less power"? Power losses in the transformer? Transformers do not "consume" power. They just transform power from one voltage to another.
The weather causes by far most power outages. I understand that a solar storm could induce undesired currents in long transmission lines, but storms down here on earth wreak havoc far more often. Source: http://www.dieselserviceandsupply.com/causes_of_power_failures.aspx If anything, we should be worried about satellites. They have to endure more ionizing irradiation than usual and aren't as easily replaced as a transformer down on earth. On the plus side, most of our communication networks are fiber-optic and short range radio now. They're unaffected by those solar disturbances.
Luckily there is 1 sat at the L1 point that can give us 10 to 20 minutes warning. This could hopefully be enough time for power companies to shut down power, which they need to have plans on doing for a possible solar flare in 2012 to 2014 which could make the one that hit in, um, 1859, look like a bottle rocket. If that one hits and the power is still on we could be looking at much of the world being without power for weeks, even months, and possibly years. Transformers aren't kept in stock much. They're built as they're needed. The problem with the sat is that it's 15 years old and NASA is surpised it even still works.
A really big solar storm could make transformers the world over explode, melt power lines, etc. It would cost trillions of dollars, and years, to fix. Many people would die. Yes, sats are vulnerable, and losing access to the GPS system would cause widespread havoc, not because you'd have to look at a map to find the local shops but because finanical institutions use the clocks in the GPS system for their transactions. Solar flares have caused interuption to the GPS system in the past. That was before how widespread it is now. It was also less than 10 years ago. That's how quickly we've become dependent on it.
Yeah, it's called science. I believe it's been reported in such science magazines as Scientific America, Cosmos, you can probably I imagine look up scientists talking about it on some site called Youtube.
There's no need to be overly condescending. If you talk about many people dying and trillions of dollars in damages without giving any context, some skepticism should be understandable. You have to admit that your post can easily be interpreted as hyperbole. There are many possible questions. How likely is such an event? You mentioned an 1859 solar flare, which suggests that such an event is uncommon. Is it really a global effect? Usually, charged particles flying towards Earth are concentrated on the polar areas. Since you seem to be unwilling to discuss this, I will do some reading myself. It's an interesting topic.
Solar storm of 1859 Magnetic storm On September 12, 1859, the largest recorded geomagnetic storm occurred. Aurorae were seen around the world, most notably over the Caribbean; also noteworthy were those over the Rocky Mountains that were so bright that their glow awoke gold miners, who began preparing breakfast because they thought it was morning.[3] According to professor Daniel Baker of the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, "people in the northeastern U.S. could read newspaper print just from the light of the aurora."[4] Telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed, in some cases even shocking telegraph operators.[5] Telegraph pylons threw sparks and telegraph paper spontaneously caught fire.[6] Some telegraph systems appeared to continue to send and receive messages despite having been disconnected from their power supplies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Super_Flare
The worst would be a thing called a CME Coronal Mass Emission - and at that it has to graze our atmosphere and they think that is what happened in 1859 http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/26oct_solarshield/
At that you are probably better off for having gone through that surge as you will be in a better position when (not if) the next one strikes
11 into 6Billion goes how many times? So that's how many times we've had these 'bumpy rides'. Pardon me if i don't hide in the cellar.
Um, what? One of my friends works for a power company and he told me that they've had scientists check out things and have told them that since my state's electrical grid runs north to south (the lines) that we will probably come out ok even in a large event because it's usually lines that run east to west that are damaged. That's good news. However, a large event would cause major financial damage even if it didn't destroy power grids on Earth due to the before mentioned GPS sats.
Yeah but, yeah but, I live in the far west!! Probably on one of the longest power relays in the state too! (I can almost see the NT border from here) I am just glad I have my own little solar cell array!!
This all has me wondering how computers will hold out. If unplugged telegraph machines were going off imagine what it could do to a harddrive.
Ye did change the way our interconnection work so that there won't be a chain reaction next time. Those new interconnection also prevented us from being afected when there was that big blackout in the north east last time. New York and Ontario weren't protected as we are and they suffered from it.
Yes sometimes there is a silver lining - but scientists and engineers are not fools and have been trying to get America to do something about it's ageing electrical infrastructure for a long time now if the science reports are accurate. I have a feeling that many of the rest of us might come out OK given the decentralisation that many grids are undertaking
Granny says mebbe dat's what's causin' alla global warmin'?... Earth's core far hotter than thought 26 April 2013 - New measurements suggest the Earth's inner core is far hotter than prior experiments suggested, putting it at 6,000C - as hot as the Sun's surface.
