Why experts say a solar storm could cause trillions of dollars worth of damage

[Berni]

The damage to the power grid would likely not be that bad.

There are lots of protection systems in place that would start tripping and disconnecting things. So the major pieces of equipment would not sustain damage. But it might blow up some of the switchgear around it when it is disconnecting to protect things.

So we would not be in the dark ages just yet, but a lot of people would certainly be left without power for quite a while as they slowly restart the grid and repair things.

We had one instance of major power grid problems here about a decade ago where a rare weather condition deposited a few centimeters of ice on everything. This includes power lines, making them become a lot heavier and snap. This left a lot of the population without power for at least hours, some areas for days, or some more remote areas even for weeks.

[coppercone2]

idk the power grid seems pretty bootleg. USA had a gigantic power outage in 2000 that lasted for like 3 days because of 1 fault. I assume if you had 100000 faults simultaneously it would be out for a few years

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003

The blackout's proximate cause was a software bug in the alarm system at the control room of FirstEnergy, an Akron, Ohio–based company, which rendered operators unaware of the need to redistribute load after overloaded transmission lines drooped into foliage. What should have been a manageable local blackout cascaded into the collapse of much of the Northeast regional electricity distribution system.

if this thing went down right there would be no software lol

and you would have partially damaged shit that fails sometimes after its rebooted probobly. hard to inspect that much shit, they would have to guess. Like there would be no way to go that various components are gonna totally failed next time it surges slightly because of lightning or whatever. The amount of testing you would need to do for reliability would be insane. It would really suck. And like if underground things break forget about it, the cities would be construction sites for like a decade. like i think there is a potential for a ridiculous global whack a mole game with electrical infrastructure. And if some under sea cables or whatever overload to some areas too.. damn

what you would need like a civil defense corps of electrical workers, something like the national guard to make it go anywhere near smoothly. that means training tons of people in complicated things for a contingency. super crazy

[SiliconWizard]

Don't give people too many ideas.

[jonpaul]

Solar storm effect is Similar to EMP = Electromagnetic Pulse

See the Starfish Prime nuclear test in 1952.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime

A 1.4  MT burst (exoatmospheric 400 km alt)

https://www.atomicarchive.com/media/photographs/testing/us/fishbowl.html
https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2022/07/08/starfish-prime-the-first-accidental-geomagnetic-storm/


1000s of miles away in Hawaii the electric grid was out and badly damaged.


HAVE AN ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC DAY!
From an optimist in the Nuclear Age
Jon

[Marco]

EMP affects small circuits with a pulse, disturbance of the radiation belts affects large circuits at very low frequency. The fact a nuclear bomb can do both doesn't make them similar.

[tszaboo]

A Carrington level event might just clean space of all the Stariinkjunk satellites. Silver lining.

The first satellites that get destroyed will be geostationary satellites  . And as a byproduct of being in geostationary orbit, satellites that lost control will stay there forever as a space junk rather than naturally deorbit in a relatively short time period.

Actually, geostationary is a bit of a misnomer, they drift out of it over time. As I recall, they need something like 500m/s per decade DeltaV to stay there, which is not insignificant. You can land on the mun with that much in KSP.

[ejeffrey]

A Carrington level event might just clean space of all the Stariinkjunk satellites. Silver lining.

The first satellites that get destroyed will be geostationary satellites  . And as a byproduct of being in geostationary orbit, satellites that lost control will stay there forever as a space junk rather than naturally deorbit in a relatively short time period.

Actually, geostationary is a bit of a misnomer, they drift out of it over time. As I recall, they need something like 500m/s per decade DeltaV to stay there, which is not insignificant. You can land on the mun with that much in KSP.

They drift due to solar wind, lunar tidal forces, and probably other factors such that they need station keeping to stay within your antenna pattern, but AFAIK, not enough that they get "out" of the geostationary orbital region.  A satellite in the geo band that dies without being moved to a graveyard orbit becomes a navigation hazard for other geostationary satellites basically forever.

[wraper]

A Carrington level event might just clean space of all the Stariinkjunk satellites. Silver lining.

The first satellites that get destroyed will be geostationary satellites  . And as a byproduct of being in geostationary orbit, satellites that lost control will stay there forever as a space junk rather than naturally deorbit in a relatively short time period.

Actually, geostationary is a bit of a misnomer, they drift out of it over time. As I recall, they need something like 500m/s per decade DeltaV to stay there, which is not insignificant. You can land on the mun with that much in KSP.

They need periodic correction not due to deorbiting but because they need to move with the same radial velocity as Earth rotation. So they virtually stay above the same area of Earth surface. If there is some desynchronization, satellite will move to another area where it cannot do its intended service for particular region. Think about it the same way as quartz clocks needing periodic time correction. If you don't correct them, they will still work just fine but eventually will be so much out of sync that become unusable. And as ejeffrey said, there are factors that will get it out of sync.

[langwadt]

The damage to the power grid would likely not be that bad.

There are lots of protection systems in place that would start tripping and disconnecting things. So the major pieces of equipment would not sustain damage. But it might blow up some of the switchgear around it when it is disconnecting to protect things.

So we would not be in the dark ages just yet, but a lot of people would certainly be left without power for quite a while as they slowly restart the grid and repair things.

We had one instance of major power grid problems here about a decade ago where a rare weather condition deposited a few centimeters of ice on everything. This includes power lines, making them become a lot heavier and snap. This left a lot of the population without power for at least hours, some areas for days, or some more remote areas even for weeks.

yeh, imagine trying to cold start the grid with various thing broken and  possibly no or very little communication working either

[SiliconWizard]

We don't have to imagine. We have seen how little things can disrupt our organizations in a major way, talk about a severe solar storm...

[tszaboo]

A Carrington level event might just clean space of all the Stariinkjunk satellites. Silver lining.

The first satellites that get destroyed will be geostationary satellites  . And as a byproduct of being in geostationary orbit, satellites that lost control will stay there forever as a space junk rather than naturally deorbit in a relatively short time period.

Actually, geostationary is a bit of a misnomer, they drift out of it over time. As I recall, they need something like 500m/s per decade DeltaV to stay there, which is not insignificant. You can land on the mun with that much in KSP.

They need periodic correction not due to deorbiting but because they need to move with the same radial velocity as Earth rotation. So they virtually stay above the same area of Earth surface. If there is some desynchronization, satellite will move to another area where it cannot do its intended service for particular region. Think about it the same way as quartz clocks needing periodic time correction. If you don't correct them, they will still work just fine but eventually will be so much out of sync that become unusable. And as ejeffrey said, there are factors that will get it out of sync.

These aren't unexpected desynchronizations. What you described here only works in a two body model, where both objects are spherical. Other planets, the moon will pull it out of the orbit, and the Earth isn't uniformic spere. Most satellites would end up in an inclined orbit, and they need to regularly correct the orbit to "stay in place". But on a really long term timescale, they would totally end up somewhere unexpected.

[wraper]

These aren't unexpected desynchronizations. What you described here only works in a two body model, where both objects are spherical. Other planets, the moon will pull it out of the orbit, and the Earth isn't uniformic spere. Most satellites would end up in an inclined orbit, and they need to regularly correct the orbit to "stay in place". But on a really long term timescale, they would totally end up somewhere unexpected.

I said nothing that would indicate only two bodies, and I said nothing about it being unexpected. And yes other sources of gravity do impact their orbit. What I essentially said is that geostationary satellites must be much more precise with their orbit compared to the vast majority of other satellites. LEO satellites on other hand must periodically lift their orbit just to not deorbit relatively quickly and eventually burn into atmosphere. Geostationary satellites while will slowly drift out of their intended orbit, they will never deorbit (to Earth). In other words geostationary satellites need to periodically correct their orbit to be able to do their job but LEO satellites need to lift their orbit just to not fall down.

[coppercone2]

[David Hess]

AC does make a lot of sense on the big scale of power transmission and oldschool iron transformers are incredibly resilient, yes they can saturate too, but that doesn't destroy a transformer. It just makes it draw a massive current for a bit before the fuses blow and disconnect it.

Yet there are plenty of incidents were the transformers did get destroyed.  With minor geomagnetic events, the transformer may only be damaged and self destruct weeks to months later.  Maybe fuses and circuit breakers can protect the transformers, but that has not generally been the case so far.

[Marco]

The power of the inertia has to go somewhere, just measuring the input current or temperature could be too slow.

Trying to detect the low frequency current will probably give you earlier warning.

[Berni]

AC does make a lot of sense on the big scale of power transmission and oldschool iron transformers are incredibly resilient, yes they can saturate too, but that doesn't destroy a transformer. It just makes it draw a massive current for a bit before the fuses blow and disconnect it.

Yet there are plenty of incidents were the transformers did get destroyed.  With minor geomagnetic events, the transformer may only be damaged and self destruct weeks to months later.  Maybe fuses and circuit breakers can protect the transformers, but that has not generally been the case so far.

Well yes transformers do fail here and there just like any equipment. The extra stress of a solar storm would certainly up the failure rate, especially on units that are already close to failing and just need an extra nudge to finally give up the ghost.

Just saying that it wouldn't be as spectacular as some make it sound where the solar storm would cause most transformers in the grid to suddenly catastrophically fail along with blowing up all the generators in power plants. Yes there would certainly be damage, but most of the transformers should survive just fine, also most of the damage being to switch gear around them (that is easier to replace).

There would certainly be a massive outage, but not like we would have to go rewind all the transformers and generators. It is the copper based communication networks that would have the sensitive electronics on each end blown to beyond repair.

[Andy Chee]

Trying to detect the low frequency current will probably give you earlier warning.

The normal way to detect coronal mass ejections is by placing a monitoring satellite at the Sun-Earth Lagrange point L1. This should give a few minutes of warning to isolate sections of the grid, or indeed shut down the grid gracefully.

[tszaboo]

These aren't unexpected desynchronizations. What you described here only works in a two body model, where both objects are spherical. Other planets, the moon will pull it out of the orbit, and the Earth isn't uniformic spere. Most satellites would end up in an inclined orbit, and they need to regularly correct the orbit to "stay in place". But on a really long term timescale, they would totally end up somewhere unexpected.

I said nothing that would indicate only two bodies, and I said nothing about it being unexpected. And yes other sources of gravity do impact their orbit. What I essentially said is that geostationary satellites must be much more precise with their orbit compared to the vast majority of other satellites. LEO satellites on other hand must periodically lift their orbit just to not deorbit relatively quickly and eventually burn into atmosphere. Geostationary satellites while will slowly drift out of their intended orbit, they will never deorbit (to Earth). In other words geostationary satellites need to periodically correct their orbit to be able to do their job but LEO satellites need to lift their orbit just to not fall down.

I think both of us are trying to explain something to someone, who has a very good understanding of the issue.

[AndyBeez]

Briefly.

The mechanism that kills LEO satellites during a major   GMS is atmospheric drag. During periods of high solar activity, the very tenuous upper atmosphere expands, due to heating. Not enough of an increase to measure on a barometer, but enough to drag on a satellite's orbital circumstances. Even the ISS has to correct for atmospheric drag.

A nice explanation: https://www.hko.gov.hk/en/education/space-weather/effects-of-space-weather/00427-atmospheric-drag-on-the-motion-of-satellites.html

Solar storms also destroy the efficiency of solar panels.
As for Clark Belt satellites, even a minor GMS will 'electrify' the body, turning it into a giant charged capacitor. Internal ESD is an issue.

[Marco]

The normal way to detect coronal mass ejections is by placing a monitoring satellite at the Sun-Earth Lagrange point L1. This should give a few minutes of warning to isolate sections of the grid, or indeed shut down the grid gracefully.

That's likely going to be too conservative. It's not like the entire earth responds the same, sometimes you are just in a nice symmetrical spot where nothing happens.

[coppercone2]

[Andy Chee]

That's likely going to be too conservative. It's not like the entire earth responds the same, sometimes you are just in a nice symmetrical spot where nothing happens.

For a start, this technique is currently in use today right now.

But it’s not a direct link between satellite and grid protection circuitry as you seem to be guessing. There is definitely human(s) in the process interpreting satellite telemetry on a daily basis and then giving the space weather report to the grid operator. The grid operator then decides what the shut down plan is, if anything.

Basically it is analogous to weather stations predicting future forecasts, so that wind turbine operators can furl their blades in advance preparation of a hurricane/tornado.

[Marco]

Where did they black out in anticipation of a solar storm disturbance?

[coppercone2]

atlantis does it

[Andy Chee]

Where did they black out in anticipation of a solar storm disturbance?

Since the first Lagrangian solar observatory was launched in 1996, we haven’t had a strong enough solar storm to warrant grid shut down.

A new solar observatory is due to arrive at the Lagrangian point next year.

Whilst the L1 Lagrangian point is relevant for direct earth impact, there are several other solar observatories in different orbits giving a wide view of the sun’s solar behaviour.

Yes, CME remains unpredictable. But unlike an unpredictable earthquake, the vast distance between Sun and earth offers us some reaction time.