Imagine having no running water to drink. You have no gas in your car and the gas station has nothing for you either. Systems that move food to densely populated cities from the mostly rural areas where it’s grown, grind to a halt. The shelves at your local grocer have nothing on offer. This isn’t necessarily the stuff of Hollywood fantasy. A geomagnetic storm could make this disaster scenario a reality.
A Warning From FEMA
Geomagnetic disturbances are measured on a scale of intensity from category G1 to G5. According to a 2019 document titled the Federal Operating Concept for Impending Space Weather Events, FEMA warns of what can happen within 16 hours of the most intense G5 level geomagnetic disturbances. Among the possibilities are bulk power grid collapse, loss of satellite and sky wave radio communication, loss of GPS navigation and timing, and a degradation of satellite operations.
Just imagine if we were stripped of all those capabilities with less than a day of notice. The technological backbones of our technologically dependent civilization suddenly wiped out.
Most people have no idea what a Coronal Mass Ejection even is, let alone how to protect themselves from one. And for those unfortunate souls trying to figure it out on the fly… hopefully they have a hard copy encyclopedia handy. Good luck trying to get online when we’re all at the same time alerted of this strange solar projectile of doom headed our way.
Think You’re Prepared?
How long do you think you’d make it? Do you think you could last a week? Six months? Some experts believe a worst-case hit from a Coronal Mass Ejection could knock us back to the stone age for as long as a decade, or more. If that were to occur, we would re-emerge into a whole new existence and social order. The fraction of us who were “fortunate” enough to survive will never be the same.
How likely is such an event? To some degree, inevitable. Some estimates suggest over 10% likelihood of a troublesome event every decade. The consequences of such an event, however, are not inevitable. The extent of damage will be largely defined by the magnitude of the event, which like an earthquake can range significantly.
Unlike an earthquake though, we do have the technical know-how to protect ourselves from the worst of a CME. But this is a developing field. And knowing how to protect ourselves is unfortunately a whole different matter than actually being prepared to do so.
What Would it Look Like
It’s popular to begin these stories by describing a scene with groups of people in awe of newly visible auroras in unusually low latitudes. Northern Lights in Cali?! Radical!! Beachgoers are taking pictures of the awesome spectacle. Next, their cell phones stop working and suddenly the party atmosphere becomes one of confusion.
On the Lookout for Disaster
I suppose that’s possible, but I don’t think it will work quite like that. An infrastructure destroying solar storm will likely not come as a complete surprise to us. Those phones would have probably alerted them to the coming event thanks to NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center and the US Air Force’s 557thWeather Wing.
Curiosity will pique even the most casual observers of reality. It will be hard to ignore when the power grid is strategically shut down around them to minimize damage from the impending solar storm. If folks don’t get the word about what exactly is happening, they will know something is happening. And whatever this invisible force is has disrupted society as we know it… and it hasn’t even arrived yet.
Once it does arrive, the Northern Lights may be visible all the way to the tropics. If not for the effect on our infrastructure it would be nothing more than a dazzling, celestial light show.
What is a Coronal Mass Ejection?
Every 11 years or so the sun completes a full cycle of activity that ranges from maximum to minimum levels of infernal ferociousness. As the cycle approaches a peak, there becomes an increasing likelihood that the ferocious mass will spew a piece of itself into the cosmic abyss.
Unfortunately for us, we’re in that cosmic abyss. And occasionally, that magnetically charged flying mass of plasma spew heads directly towards us. If you were looking for a term more technical than magnetically charged plasma spew (MCPS), it’s actually called a Coronal Mass Ejection, or CME.
While this all sounds terrifying, the danger associated with a CME isn’t due to any physically destructive properties of the particles themselves. You won’t melt or anything. Humans have lived peacefully through countless CMEs, forever, with little notice. The real danger posed by a CME is what it can do to our power grid.
Why Are CMEs a Danger to the Power Grid?
Before our planet was coated in long, electrically conductive wires, CMEs were nothing more than a beautiful spectacle for those lucky enough to witness. But the web of conductors that make modern life possible changes this equation substantially.
Induced Current
Thanks to the work of Michael Faraday (1791-1867), we know that the relative motion of a magnetic field with respect to a loop of wire will induce an electrical current in that wire. The strength of that current is proportional to:
1) the strength of the magnetic field,
2) the relative speed of motion between the loop(s) of wire and magnetic field,
3) the number of loops of wire present, and
4) the length of the wire.
This principal is at work all over our power system, and in most of our power generation plants. By holding a coil of wire steady and rotating a magnet, or rotating the wires and holding the magnet steady, an electrical current is induced.
In most power generation plants, external forces on large turbines are used to create this rotation. The turbine can be rotated by steam created from the burning of fossil fuels or from heat produced by nuclear fission. It can be rotated by the power of the wind or by harnessing the power of waves. Or you can initiate that rotation with your legs on a bicycle, which is the principal behind electrical assist pedal bikes.
Geomagnetic Storms
Unfortunately for those of us who depend on our power grid, this principal can work against us in the case CMEs. The high energy particles responsible for the beautiful visual displays are accompanied by much more devious, lower energy particles. These lower energy particles make up what’s called the auroral electrojet and they carry an electrical current. Interactions between the electrojet and earth’s magnetic field creates a fluctuation of magnetic fields above our web of wires. In accordance with Faraday’s principles, this relative motion can induce a potentially damaging current in our transmission lines. These are referred to as Geomagnetically Induced Currents (GICs).
As we learned in our Say Watt?! article, when equipment is subjected to more current than it’s rated for it can catch fire or melt. The destruction caused by these GICs can be catastrophic for the power grid.
Some equipment particularly vulnerable to GICs, like certain transformers, can take a couple of years to manufacture and aren’t made in the United States. If enough long lead time grid components are destroyed, a huge swath of Earth’s population could be waiting in line for years for the key components needed to deliver them back to the 21st century.
That Sounds Bad
It gets worse. Current isn’t only induced in our overhead, current carrying conductors. Long conductive materials of all sorts will be energized, including gas lines. GICs can increase the temperature in these lines enough to cause explosions which will cripple the nation’s ability to distribute gas. Unexploded gas lines won’t have the needed electrical power to move fluid anyway. So, in addition to our massive power outage, we’ve also lost the juice that fuels modern transportation. Great, right?
Critical Infrastructure
Don’t forget that our city’s water systems also require electricity to function. Water is conveyed through pipes which are pressurized using power from our electric grid. Water and wastewater treatment plants need electricity to operate as well.
Food, water, transport, heating, cooling, security, healthcare. There isn’t an industry beyond the reach of this disaster. Don’t get me started on the toilet paper shortages!
The Internet
At this point I’ll be glad the internet is down. Well not really. But catastrophic events tend to bring the tin foil hat committee together. They look for evidence of conspiracy and eventually zero in on the unfortunate believers of science who initially sounded the alarm. See Bill Gates and Covid for an example. He probably got more crooked eyes from folks believing he was the cause of the pandemic than he did appreciation for at least trying to warn us (thanks, Bill).
Well, I’m no Bill Gates, but here I am warning of the inevitability of a disaster, and it would really bum me out if I became the fall guy for a Coronal Mass Ejection. So, if there is an upside to such an event, it will be the momentary silencing of trolls, kooks, and online agitators everywhere. Yes, we will be forced to deal with this disaster in person, looking our neighbors in the eye. Many of us learning their names for the first time. And having actual social, human interactions IRL.
Historical Precedent
This isn’t all theory. We have actual, real-world data on how these geomagnetic storms can interact with cables overhead.
1859: The Carrington Event
The arrival of particles from a Coronal Mass Ejection in 1859 would indeed have been an event that caught spectators by surprise. There weren’t any LA beachgoers with phones, but stunning visuals of the aurora were reported as far south as the Caribbean. Imagine seeing the Northern Lights in Jamaica!
The event was named after an amateur astronomer, Richard Carrington, who saw the initial solar explosion while observing unusual sun spots. He observed an incredibly intense, bright, white light which burned for about five minutes.
Not a day later, telegraph operators all over reported incidents of fires, shocks and malfunctions. Some operators were able to send messages using only the geomagnetically induced current after disconnecting their power source.
Richard Carrington had the honor of becoming the namesake for the event because he was the first to draw a connection between the exploding sun spots and the shocking events that followed.
This was the first major solar storm that would interact with a web of wires above humanity. But it would not be the last.
1989: Hydro-Quebec Blackout
In March of 1989 a CME caused the Hydro-Quebec power system to collapse, leaving millions of customers without power for a solid 9 to 12 hours. Potentially several times smaller in magnitude than the Carrington Event, the resulting outage was a major eye opener. After action studies and subsequent corrections have positioned Quebec as a leader in the protection of modern power systems from geomagnetically induced currents.
2012: The Myans Were Almost Right…
Ok, maybe we didn’t narrowly escape the end of days. But we did narrowly escape a Carrington level CME by about a week. Had the solar explosion that occurred in July of 2012 happened only days earlier, we would have had our test against a major CME. The National Academy of Science estimated the resulting economic damage would have been on the order of 20 times that of Hurricane Katrina.
Speaking of hurricanes, recent events may give us some insight into the challenges of piecing an obliterated power grid back together.
Hurricane Maria
In September of 2017, our fellow citizens in Puerto Rico suffered a horrific one-two punch. The devastating blows were served up by the Atlantic Hurricane Season and offered no quarter.
First, Hurricane Irma skirted past the island, delivering a glancing blow (compared to what came next). Irma was a massive Category 5 Hurricane which left over $700 million in damage to the island in its wake.
Still reeling from the devastation visited by Irma, Hurricane Maria came in only days later, grinding and churning directly overhead. The notoriously decrepit electric grid didn’t stand a chance. It was completely leveled by the assault.
The following February, I spent a month on the island embedded with a power crew that was still working 12-hours a day, 7-days a week, piecing the grid back together. This was five long months after the Hurricanes had passed.
The resilience of the Puerto Rican people still living under electrical darkness was nothing short of heroic. Can you imagine what your neighborhood would be like if there was no electricity for six months?
And the lineman… many of the lineman hadn’t seen home since they first arrived months previous. This was grueling work performed in sweltering heat.
While I have enormous respect and admiration for so many people I met while I was in Puerto Rico, that is not the point of this article.
Six Long Months
I want you to think about the fact that the power crews were still rolling six months after the devastation. Why? Were they being lazy? I can personally assure you these are some of the hardest working people I have ever met. Laziness certainly wasn’t the case.
Was it politics? Maybe. I’m not a politician. There were undeniably some bad political optics involved with that response, but if there was anyone on the island unmotivated to restore power, I certainly never met or interacted with them.
Logistics
No, from where I stood, the problem wasn’t lack of motivation at all. The glaring problem on the ground was logistics.
An entire electric grid needed to be pieced back together with parts that weren’t readily available on the island. Certainly not in the quantities needed. I mean, who keeps a spare electrical grid handy?
Now, in addition to the day to day needs of the population, miles and miles of different types of cable, various sizes of transformers, power poles and other parts and pieces that make up the power grid were needed.
Don’t forget, the damage served up by these hurricanes wasn’t limited to the electric grid. Homes, businesses and roads and other infrastructure needed to be repaired as well. Ships were loaded up with urgently needed construction materials.
Urgently needed supplies competed for limited space in shipping containers. The ships carrying containers competed for a place to offload their haul. The resulting bottle neck created disastrous delays.
Why Are We Talking About Hurricanes?
A destructive CME could present similar challenges. Typically, a blackout is a local event resulting from terrestrial weather. Utilities around the country share an agreement to assist each other and share resources after a disaster. In this way, unaffected utilities can help bail out the devastated ones. This resource sharing allows a much quicker response and provides a larger inventory of repair parts for the affected utility.
But what if your neighboring communities were affected too? And your neighbor’s neighbors? What if the blackout extends not only across the entire country, but across the globe?
There becomes a point where this system falls apart and everyone is competing for the same, limited resources. In Puerto Rico the entire power grid was destroyed. Destruction on a similar scale on the mainland or across the world could mean billions of people, suddenly without power.
Some critical components take years to build and are so massive that they require special bridges to be built just for transport. When devastation is limited to a corner of the country, this is achievable. But our grid restoration plans do not anticipate total destruction.
It was shocking to see the grid still being pieced together in Puerto Rico, months after the Hurricanes had passed. Given a perfect solar storm, regions of the US could be without power for years.
How Can We Protect Ourselves?
Fortunately, we are already armed with knowledge that can help defend our power grid from CMEs. But before you breath that sigh of relief, it’s important to recognize the difference between having the knowledge to protect ourselves and actually taking the steps to do so.
Variables We Can Control
While there are some variables outside of our control, such as the magnitude of a CME, there are some we can do something about. Let’s revisit four variables contributing to the strength of geomagnetically induced currents:
1) the strength of the magnetic field,
2) the relative speed of motion between the loop(s) of wire and magnetic field,
3) the number of loops of wire present, and
4) the length of the wire.
Of these four factors, we have no control over the strength of the magnetic field. That is determined by the CME. So too is the relative motion between the magnetic field and our overhead wires. But the other two factors we do have some control over.
Number of Loops
For the most part, the “loops of wire” we’re concerned about are our grounded overhead cables or the coiled wire in our transformers. The number of loops in our transformers are fixed so we can’t change that. But when circuits are opened, current flow is interrupted which leaves effectively zero loops for current to travel. So, if grid operators are given sufficient warning, they can prepare and protect the grid from the incoming solar bombardment. This can significantly limit the damage to our grid.
Length of Wire
When it comes to CMEs, the most vulnerable part of our grid is the long transmission lines. Super long transmission lines were the culprit in Quebec. Fortunately, with relatively inexpensive devices the transmission system can be protected. Again, this doesn’t mean transmission systems currently are protected. But a public that is becoming better informed on this subject will hopefully ensure they will be soon.
In the most intense events, even shorter runs of wire may be susceptible to dangerous current surges. If we’re ever warned of an incoming, intense G5 level event, start unplugging devices from your walls. This will open circuits and prevent overloaded appliances and devices from becoming shock and fire hazards.
Micro-Grids
Micro-grids offer a ready-made solution to this problem. Their very nature negates the need for the long transmission lines that are most vulnerable to geomagnetic storms.
If you have solar panels and battery backup and you can separate from the grid you will be positioned well to ride out the storm. Then after the event has passed you can be the beacon of power for your block.
Go figure, yet another argument in favor of switching to solar.
Summary
Our technology dependent society has been dodging a celestial bullet for quite a while now. Fortunately, we’re becoming better armed to defend ourselves against coronal mass ejections, but this doesn’t justify complacency. We aren’t there yet. If we’re knocked back to the stone age it will be because we allowed it to happen.
We can’t harden ourselves enough to completely defend ourselves against a disaster like a tsunami. Sure, we can take precautions that will improve our odds of survival. But if a tsunami comes, massive damage is inevitable. This isn’t the case with a CME. We have the ability to ensure we’re protected if we only demand it is so. The question is, will we… before it’s too late?
Thank You!
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