Power Companies Brace For Solar Storms 111
Hugh Pickens writes "Three large explosions from the sun over the past few days have prompted U.S. government scientists to caution users of satellite, telecommunications and electric equipment to prepare for possible disruptions over the next few days that could affect communications and GPS satellites, leave thousands without power for weeks to months, and might even produce an aurora visible as far south as Minnesota and Wisconsin. 'The concern is if the electric grid lost a number of transformers during a single storm, replacing them would be difficult and time-consuming,' says Rich Lordan, senior technical executive for power delivery and utilization at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). The largest solar storm in recorded history was in 1859, when communications infrastructure was limited to telegraphs. Some telegraph operators reported electric shocks, papers caught fire, and the Northern Lights appeared as far south as Cuba and Hawaii. The first of the three solar explosions from the sun already passed the Earth on Thursday with little impact and the second is passing the Earth now and 'seems to be stronger.' "We'll have to see what happens over the next few days," says space weather scientist Joseph Kunches. '[The third storm] could exacerbate the disturbance in the Earth's magnetic field caused by the second (storm) or do nothing at all.'"
Excuse (Score:4, Funny)
Reads like something from the Bastard Operator From Hell's excuse calendar
Re:Excuse (Score:4, Interesting)
Technically, yes, it was:
Unfortunately, the excuse doesn't work when your boss also reads BOFH, is a solar physicist, and the project scientist for three the satellites mentioned in these articles.
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Just as the Japanese government is buying up beef that grew from rice straw with a little something extra sprinkled on it? Prodding those cows may trigger an unexpected reaction...
Could solar flares generate a new isotope of cesium? Can tablets be used to allow the masses to produce modern versions of those 50's B movies? Giant ants, crabs, mantis, possessed bulldozers, the blob... solar storms and an atomic mishap, the stuff classic B movie sci-fi can be made of. Will it all trigger something new in
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I think the solution to your ... dilemma ... is in rearranging the last couple of lines. Unless, of course, your Boss already has his own elephant gun, double-barrelled and is standing just behind you.
Looking at
Re:bright tuesday (Score:4, Informative)
If anyone actually noticed the date on the article, "Published August 3, 2011" - the solar storms, FYI, were *last week*, and the peak of the impact was last Friday night, and has dropped to pretty much normal since.
Sheesh, if you're gonna panic, at least check something current like spaceweather.com, and not panic over a NatGeo article published about "the coming problem" days after it already came & went, with little impact.
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NatGeo IS the coming problem.
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The fact that they're too cool to call themselves National Geographic anymore is evidence of that.
I don't get the American fetish with chopping up words into little bite-sized chunks.
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At least Germans join the words at full length when they make a compound one. Oh, how they must laugh at the feeble Americans.
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If The Sun scares you, why not switch to The New York Times?
Communications disruption can mean only one thing (Score:1)
Invasion
Getting to be ho-hum.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The frequency and alarm with which these "OMG!!! Solar storm coming!!!" announcements are made, and the almost total lack of anything perceptibly happening, is quickly becoming a boy-who-cried-wolf situation. It's rather like tornado sirens going off just because there's a nasty storm dropping hail... it happens so frequently that everyone just ignores them, and what good is there in an early warning system if people have been conditioned to disregard it?
Re:Getting to be ho-hum.... (Score:5, Informative)
My issue is that Slashdot is "breaking" this story 5 days after National Geographic posted it and days after the storms already past yet the story reads like this is still an imminent event.
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Mod parent up
This sort of thing really, really pisses me off. Look, if a post is good I'll mod it up when I have the points; if it's not good I won't mod it up. Quite frankly I couldn't give two figs about your or anyone else's opinion unless I'm meta-moderating.
Tell me, truly, do you really think that your telling people how to spend their point really makes a difference? Does the feeling that you might have effected even the tiniest whit of change make up for not having points of your own? Actually you needn't bother
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One of my compact fluorescents let the magic smoke out last night... That's something... Possibly not related.
That's nothing. I had to reboot my MacPro! It's either Solar Flares or the End of the World is Nigh Upon Us!
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That sounds nasty. Breathing vaporized Hg and all that. Any mad as a hatter symptoms?
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Any mad as a hatter symptoms?
Well, he is posting to slashdot...
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Cell service, too (Score:4, Informative)
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Just curious, if these systems have decent clocks (I have some servers that NTP-sync once a week and have clock drift compensation, that's all (free) software on regular PC hardware, and it's only off by a tiny fraction of a second after a week) how long could the network stay up if all the towers lost the GPS signal?
Re:Cell service, too (Score:4, Informative)
We're talking about microsecond-accuracy clocks. Even good quartz clocks drift too fast.
There's the same problem in synchronous optic networks - endpoints _must_ be perfectly synchronized or it doesn't work at all. That's why communication companies are the biggest buyers of precise atomic clocks.
The problem is, a lot of endpoints now use simple GPS receivers and not atomic clocks.
Re:Cell service, too (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Cell service, too (Score:4, Informative)
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Actually it's not the PHY that's special for IEEE1588, it's the MAC. It has "fast path" hardware which can accurately timestamp/send out IEEE1588 frames.
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Then fix it... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why are the power companies warning us ? There's nothing we can do. It's their responsibility to keep the grid running, not ours.
If it takes so long to get a replacement transformer, they should have ordered a couple years ago, and kept them as spares.
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Some Useful Links... (Score:2)
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Maybe they can think of other solutions too. Perhaps the grid could be shut down and transformers removed from the power lines before they got ruined. Or built transformers with higher DC tolerance. But yeah, if there is no other option, keeping a large number of rotting transformers on spare is still a better idea than hoping another 1859 won't happen again.
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than hoping another 1859 won't happen again.
There is no need for hope. The storms passed and as you can see, nothing happened. Slashdot is just once again days late to the party.
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I wasn't just talking about this particular storm. We'll need the grid for the next couple of solar cycles as well, and it would be smart to take the necessary precautions before the next killer CME is already on its way to Earth.
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Yes, and yours are apparently unnecessary precautions since as we can see, nothing happened. If you want to foot the bill for all those $10 million dollar transformers, go ahead. Just don't lump us in with hiked up energy bills due to your overreactions.
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Well, then we don't need all those silly warning stories either, if nothing is ever going to happen anyway.
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than hoping another 1859 won't happen again.
There is no need for hope. The storms passed and as you can see, nothing happened. Slashdot is just once again days late to the party.
http://www.solarstorms.org/SRefStorms.html [solarstorms.org]
mmm, I like to err on the side of caution, especially when history paints a different story.
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Back in the 70's people weren't so dependent on their little gadgets and gizmos... Many people these days can't seem to survive without them.
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Keep in mind we are talking about the largest transformers that are found at substations close to the power plants themselves. There are enough spare transformers in stock to replace any neighborhood 'pole pigs' that fail. These are the ones you will see on the utility pole outside your house. Even the larger transformers that are on the outskirts of town where a main feed line comes in and branches out are quite common. The worry is the REALLY HUGH transformers that feed the cross country lines.
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Year ago I read about this stuff. There is a relatively cheap and simple fix that allows high DC current to short strait to ground instead of going through the transformer.
Too bad our government hasn't cared to enforce the use of such devices to protect us from a nation wide black out if a solar storm did hit us.
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High DC voltage can be shorted to the ground with a quite spectacular arc or with a MOV (lightning arrestor).
High DC current can be stopped by using a fuse, but fuses are usually to slow to protect from a direct lightning strike (it takes a fraction of a second for the fuse to melt). The voltage driving said current can be shorted fast enough.
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Substation power transformers are large, expensive items ($5-10,000,000 each) which are tailored to a specific site. They will have different ratings, cooling needs, impedances and connections. So your solution is to duplicate every one of these?
I'm sure the utilities would be happy to buy double, but are you willing to pay extra on your electricity bill?
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My solution is to ask the power companies to take care of the problem, in the most efficient way possible. If there's a better way than buying double, they are more than welcome to use it.
For instance, the replacement could be a slightly different type, as long it could provide a reasonable service during the time it takes to repair it properly.
And of course, if the electricity bill must go up, then it must go up. It still beats a one-year power outage whi
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My solution is to ask the power companies to take care of the problem, in the most efficient way possible. If there's a better way than buying double, they are more than welcome to use it.
...
the cheapest and most obvious solution is for them to disconnect transmission lines from sub stations ahead of the storm and ground them - then after it has passed reconnect. to do this on a large scale would take days head of the storm and days behind.. so best case ~1-2 weeks.
personally i'd be fine with it.. but i have this odd feeling that most of the rest of the world wouldn't.. it's that lovely instant gratification feeling that people seem to have..
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Probably the outage could be shortened by adding more accurate warning and measurement systems, so you only need to disconnect transmission lines when its really necessary.
Even if that means a few days, that's better than letting it fry out, and have an even longer blackout.
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I agree - or they could even put in transfer switches so that they could do it faster - either way it is the option of turning power off to the consumers.. which for the safty and longevity and cost is the logical thing to do - but because people/consumers are not rational - this won't happen and instead we will fry transformers and replace them all in the name of instant gratification.
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i wasn't in anyways thinking you would have them quick flip on/off but rather be designed to facilitate being disconnected - right now transmission lines are not meant to be disconnected at either end.. there for that task would take considerable time and manpower.
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I read an article about this problem back in the 80s, actually. At that time the concern was that a well-organized terrorist (or foreign - remember this was the cold war) attack could take out the power grid for a long time.
A typical city does not have a lot of redundancy in its substation network - it can lose one or two, but not more than that. And, when power goes out it is usually due to breakers tripping or things like that - not deliberate attack.
The threat model in the article was a bunch of infilt
Where the fuck are Minnesota and Wisconsin? (Score:1)
For those not well-versed in US geography :
is somewhere between 42.5N and 49N.
This range pretty much includes all Europe (except Portugal/Spain/Italy/Balkans), Russia, Mongolia, and Northern parts of China & Japan.
Re:Where the fuck are Minnesota and Wisconsin? (Score:4, Interesting)
This range pretty much includes all Europe (except Portugal/Spain/Italy/Balkans), Russia, Mongolia, and Northern parts of China & Japan.
This is correct, but it's not correct to assume that people in these areas can expect to see an auroral display just because one is visible in Minnesota. Auroral displays are responsive to geomagnetic [noaa.gov], not geographic, coordinates, and the geomagnetic coordinates swing south over North America and north over Asia. One would have to be above 60N (geographically) to see an auroral event in Asia visible in Minnesota at 45N.
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I guess some people would think "telecommunications are done by optic fibers now, electric disturbances won't affect them". You know, people who know just enough information to still be wrong in their logic.
Even better. . . (Score:5, Informative)
might even produce an aurora visible as far south as Minnesota and Wisconsin
The submission is so old, we can say what really happened. Aurora were visible in the United States as far south as Utah [spaceweather.com], Colorado [spaceweather.com], and Nebraska [spaceweather.com]. (Tip-'o-the-hat to SpaceWeather.com [spaceweather.com].)
Not as bad as copper thieves (Score:2)
For all the potential "fire and brimstone" these solar storms have the potential to cause, they still have yet to achieve the level of destruction and disturbance to our power and communications infrastructure as copper scrappers.
I can count at least three incidents this year where I was affected by scrappers removing copper that was in-use (communications and power). I can't think of one instance in my entire life (30 yrs) where a solar storm has caused me a disruption.
Re:Not as bad as copper thieves (Score:4, Funny)
The 1989 Quebec Solar Storm, good reading material (Score:4, Informative)
In space, some satellites actually tumbled out of control for several hours. NASA's TDRS-1 communication satellite recorded over 250 anomalies as high-energy particles invaded the satellite's sensitive electronics. Even the Space Shuttle Discovery was having its own mysterious problems. A sensor on one of the tanks supplying hydrogen to a fuel cell was showing unusually high pressure readings on March 13. The problem went away just as mysteriously after the solar storm subsided.
http://www.ips.gov.au/Educational/1/3/12 [ips.gov.au]
Service restoration took more than nine hours. This can be explained by the fact that some of the essential equipment, particularly on the James Bay transmission network, was made unavailable by the blackout. Generation from isolated stations normally intended for export was repatriated to meet Quebec's needs and the utility purchased electricity from Ontario, New Brunswick and the Alcan and McLaren Systems.
By noon, the entire generating and transmission system was back in service, although 17 percent of Quebec customers were still without electricity. In fact, several distribution-system failures occurred because of the high demand typical of Monday mornings, combined with the jump in heating load after several hours without power.
So... It caused a cascading effect, just like the most recent New York blackout, scary stuff if it occured across even a marginal size of the USA.
Why is equipment still susceptible to this? (Score:2)
You'd think in this day and age that things like transformers and the grid could be either shielded against EM radiation or simply add things like surge protectors or circuit breakers to the grid designed to withstand solar storms (or nukes even).
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It certainly could be shielded - I believe a lot of military hardware is, but it is similar to earthquake proofing buildings in that it is hideously expensive. So without government regulation (evil, evil regulation...), companies that run on profits will certainly not spend the money to protect their systems for an event that might happen once every 100 (?) years. Considering that they aren't able (or willing) to spend the money to improve the infrastructure to deal with 'normal' use (cascading blackouts a
Do you have a plan to shield all tha wire? (Score:3)
Remember the problem isn't the transformers themselves. They aren't getting hit with enough directly to cause a problem. It is the thousands and thousands of miles of wire having current induced in them, which then goes to the transformers.
If you have a suggestion for how to shield all that, for a cost that is reasonable, well I'm sure they'd love to hear it.
If all they had to do was shield large transformers, well that might be done but it isn't that simple.
In terms of surge suppressors, do you understand
Re:Do you have a plan to shield all tha wire? (Score:4, Interesting)
Not so easy to put a surge protector on that. I don't even know how you'd design an effective one at that level, much less how much it'd cost.
For the "low" amperage lines that operate under a few thousand amps, they actually do make surge fuses rated for that amperage. They are pretty interesting, using a special mixture of basically sand. At a high enough amperage level, the sand melts into glass and expands destroying the connectivity metal and turning into a non-conductor.
Granted, these are more like fuses than surge suppressors, and need replacing after being 'blown', but they do protect the low end transformers.
For the very long transmission lines at high amperage however, I do not believe there are any solutions in place to handle that type of energy.
Either way, your point stands. What we can do about the problem is very limited, and requires manual intervention with a lot of lead time.
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Because of the inputs ... (Score:3)
EM shielding won't help as it's not that the transformers themselves are directly affected ...
The long power lines act as antenna, so it comes in as a surge in the normal input (or feedback from the output). I know it's not cost-effective to re-string every power line with something that's shielded (and that in turn could reduce the transmission ability, as they don't like making power cables more than about 5cm thick, so you minimize wind and ice loads).
So, you'd have to put in some sort of a surge suppre
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As for circuit breakers ... wasn't that what took out the whole north-east when Ohio lost a section of their grid?
Yes it was, because the circuit breakers/protection were the only things that did their job properly that day
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In a word, deregulation causes this sort of problem.
The old model was cost-plus. The utility creates a plan for how they'd like to operate, and how much electricity should cost to pay for it. The Public Utilities Commission would approve the plan. Then everybody follows the plan and you get charged the state-approved rate for your electricity use.
Typically these plans would include some level of redundancy/protection/etc so that the whole country wouldn't be in the dark ages if a tree shorted out one tra
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Bonus... first to mention surge protectors.
Wait a couple hours then go and buy some
for the home (I want to get mine first).
One problem is that in large numbers they will trigger breakers and
fuses knocking out power in large areas that will then trigger surges in
other areas. The good news is that your flat screen TV might
survive but there will be no wall power or TV transmissions
to watch.
What the hell is International Business Times? (Score:3)
On Google News, IBT's headlines on the subject are:
Massive Solar Storm Could Cause Catastrophic Nuclear Threat in US
as well as
Severe Solar Storm to Create Global Chaos and Complete Darkness
and
Solar Storm Watch: Could This be Armageddon?
It's not even about "whoever screams the loudest gets the attention" anymore, it's just a loud, hollow mindset, by default. Sheesh.
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Solar Storm Watch: Could This be Armageddon?
Nah, that's in October, innit?
How do we know the third storm is coming? (Score:2)
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This is hurting my brain a little. How do we know a third storm is coming when it's traveling at the speed of light toward us?
The photons from a solar storm (primarily, the x-rays) travel at the speed of light.
What's damaging, though, are the charged particles (primarily protons) emitted by the sun. These do not travel at the speed of light.
So you see it coming before it gets here.
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A photon is the basic unit of light and all other electromagnetic radiation (radio waves/etc), it has no mass, and travels at the speed of light. When the Sun produces a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), the key word is "mass" -- on average a CME contains about 1.7 billion tons of matter. Matter cannot travel at the speed of light. So 8 minutes after the CME, the photons arrive and you can observe that there was a CME. But the actual mass usually takes 1 to 5 days to arrive here from the Sun.
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Not at the speed of light, but quite fast. Talking only hours to travel 92 mil miles
Dumb question, but... (Score:3)
Children of the sun (Score:1)
People of the earth can you hear me? ...
We are expecting ships to come in one by one.
Oh, it's over? damn. They snuck in.
Or ... (Score:3)
FTFS:
'[The third storm] could exacerbate the disturbance in the Earth's magnetic field caused by the second (storm) or do nothing at all.'"
Oh ... is that why my TV is suddenly picking up the ISS.
I figured it was just a new odd run of Big Brother.
I LOVED the episode where they voted the astronaut off the station at the same point the Solar Storm passed through! Gave him super powers he used to swing back and exact his revenge. ... no ... wait ... that was just a troubled fever dream from lasagna too late. So hard to keep track whats "reality" TV.
Circuses (Score:1)
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This story is 5 days old already.
FTFY.
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That was my first thought, too.
What a fucking depressing movie.
On topic (Score:2)
I got a decent shot of the aurora [flickr.com] resulting from the CMEs here in Montana early Saturday morning. I've collected my aurora shots here [flickr.com].
I have to say that although this was (visually) a moderately strong event, it wasn't even close to some of the auroral storms of the 90's. The power in the auroral oval [flickr.com] wasn't very high, either.
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iirc from my High School days, don't we only have 8 minutes to react to anything like this anyway before we're already hit by it? What is the point of telling us to brace for stuff when we don't have time to react.
Am I missing something?
Yes, you are. [slashdot.org]