Here Comes the Sun (hopefully not too close)
June 30, 2022 6:30 PM   Subscribe

 
I remember at the time reading about the 1989 Quebec storm and how it shut off power to a large area, and later how they installed huge protection capacitors to help protect equipment if there is a repeat event or worse. At the time I wondered if the US was learning any lessons from that event, and, all these years later, it sounds like we haven't. There are all these plans to modernize the grid to prepare for the transition from fossil fuels to renewably sourced electricity. They need to include proper protection into these plans.

I wonder what they do in European and Asian countries.

It like earthquakes in California, it is not a matter of 'if' but of 'when'.
posted by eye of newt at 6:54 PM on June 30, 2022 [1 favorite]


I just had to buy a capacitor on Wednesday. It was for my well pump. Probably not the same thing.
posted by newpotato at 7:41 PM on June 30, 2022 [2 favorites]


I think this is a picture (pdf) of the type of capacitor and other protective equipment we are talking about.
posted by eye of newt at 7:50 PM on June 30, 2022 [7 favorites]


Why would America ever prepare for such a disaster? It would be welcomed by all those who want to return to the pleasantries of the 13th century, and allow the prepper manboys an excuse to use all their guns.

But: thanks for the good and informative post. Perhaps we can hope that one of our starstruck bajillionaires might tire of their dick-swinging rocketry club and realize and investment in terran infrastructure might also have benefits.
posted by armoir from antproof case at 7:52 PM on June 30, 2022 [1 favorite]


Eye of Newt, thanks for linking. That thing is a thing of beauty. (Srsly. I have a thing for infrastructure porn.)
posted by armoir from antproof case at 8:10 PM on June 30, 2022 [2 favorites]


Will such a plasma storm put a stop to the mining of crypto? If so, I welcome it.
posted by Jon_Evil at 8:48 PM on June 30, 2022 [3 favorites]


The sun ejects a plasma bomb and people say it's an interesting scientific phenomenon. But when I do it I'm "disgusting" and "banned from the planetarium"...
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:58 PM on June 30, 2022 [17 favorites]


Solar weather and the Carrington event were special interests of a friend of mine who passed away last week. When we were in college I remember him giving me the hot updates from https://www.spaceweather.com/. I'm not sure there's anything in this article that he didn't know, but I'm sad I can't share it with him anyway.
posted by Tesseractive at 10:05 PM on June 30, 2022


Does anyone have info about how other countries are preparing for solar storms? Could a solar storm completely flip the world order if the US has no electricity for three months and basically has complete societal collapse and starvation while China or other countries continue as normal?
posted by starfishprime at 10:44 PM on June 30, 2022


eye of newt, I know the round structures on the top are cooling fans, but my first instinct was they were giant screw terminals for gigantic wires.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 11:49 PM on June 30, 2022 [3 favorites]


I don't have info on that, but perhaps other countries continuing as normal might be a good thing? I mean with regard to international help efforts and stuff like that?
posted by Ashenmote at 1:00 AM on July 1, 2022 [1 favorite]


I'm not sure there's anything in this article that he didn't know, but I'm sad I can't share it with him anyway.
That's making me sad, too. Your friend sounds neat, and I'm really sorry.
posted by Don Pepino at 11:19 AM on July 1, 2022 [1 favorite]


The scary thing about the 1989 storm was that the expected service lifetime for a lot of gear that had been hit dropped noticeably in practice as years went on, as I recall. I was getting a power systems degree in 1993, and geomagnetically induced current and issues thereof were a HOT FUCKING TOPIC.

God I love geomagnetically induced current because just the whole concept is SO NEAT. It's the difference between theory and practice made manifest. It's been decades since I was able to do the math on this shit or even discuss it coherently and also I have COVID and I'm on nyquil (yay paxlovid rebound) but I'm going to try and ramble about it in a bit more detail.

The plasma spewing out from the sun causes a magnetic flux that causes a difference in electrical charge between two areas on earth (I forget the exact order and details of the specific process of plasma hitting the planet really hard and then shit getting weird. I also *want* to say it's more a problem for north/south rather than long east/west issues so that's why the link that went from, what, Ontario to New Jersey had a problem, I think?). Not a huge deal, except you've got a big long copper or aluminum line that stretches from one place to another and when there's a voltage difference between two ends on a conductor, current will try to flow, which creates a DC voltage offset on the circuit voltages.

So, if you have an electrical feed that's 60Hz AC sine-waving along from (picking random numbers) +1000v to -1000v and back again, that DC charge difference offsets the voltage a bit so it's, like, +1050 to -950 and back and forth. So let's look at a graph of the expected behavior of AC transformer type components at one end.

So, like, you're looking at an x-y graph that's got a straight line at something like a 45-degree angle that passes through (0,0) - magnetic flux vs electric charge induced, say. Except, that's only what the relationship between those two values looks like inside normal operating parameters. If you zoom out and look at it, that nice little bit in the middle is just the middle not far past that, there's a curve until the line all around it is a terrifyingly flat-sloped line at some fucked up like 10 degree angle or some shit.

Shifting that A/C circuit up by 50volts DC means that instead of oscillating safely within the nice +1000v to -1000v area where it's a nice comfy 45 degree angle, you're suddenly out in the "oh, yeah, this small difference has a TRULY GINORMOUS DIFFERENCE" at one end of the oscillation. The performance down at the low end where your 50v DC offset takes it from -1000v to -950v looks a lot like the behavior if you're having your low peaks at -950 or -1000 because those two values are inside the 45-degree-line comfort zone.

But, the graph once you're out at 1050v instead of 1000v, instead of having a linear relationship from that nice 45 degree line, you've got the scary exponential level of change from the fucked up flat part of the graph out there in the wilds of 1050v. And so your result change is multiplicitively or even exponentially bigger than the gear's expecting to take.

And that makes all sorts of components in your system kinda stressed out and really sad.
posted by rmd1023 at 10:03 PM on July 2, 2022 [2 favorites]


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