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Permanent risk to Electric systems

Ilyan | 23.01.2009 10:30 | Technology | World

Advice is needed on how to cope with severe magnetic storm.

Prepare in case it happens in our lifetimes? :

 http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Severe_Space_Weather_999.html

""Electric power is modern society's cornerstone technology on which virtually all other infrastructures and services depend," the report notes.

Yet it is particularly vulnerable to bad space weather. Ground currents induced during geomagnetic storms can actually melt the copper windings of transformers at the heart of many power distribution systems."

Have fun, There are huge areas of the industrial world that are at risk of severe breakdown if there is a magnetic storm of the intensity that happened about eighty years ago. If you connect up your home generating system to sell electicity to the grid the blow back could blitz your system. It would be wise to give some thought to protecting your home system from the direct effect without such a connection.

Ilyan

Comments

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1859 - 1921 - now overdue?

23.01.2009 15:29

"The strongest geomagnetic storm on record is the Carrington Event of August-September 1859, named after British astronomer Richard Carrington who witnessed the instigating solar flare with his unaided eye while he was projecting an image of the sun on a white screen. Geomagnetic activity triggered by the explosion electrified telegraph lines, shocking technicians and setting their telegraph papers on fire; Northern Lights spread as far south as Cuba and Hawaii; auroras over the Rocky Mountains were so bright, the glow woke campers who began preparing breakfast because they thought it was morning. Best estimates rank the Carrington Event as 50% or more stronger than the superstorm of May 1921." NASA

Who is listening?

Prompter of Wrath

solar activity

24.01.2009 19:49

Currently we are in a period of very low solar activity, at some point this will end and we will again start with strong solar flares, when this happens satellites will be the most at risk. Modern sat construction is dumbing down the rad hardening in favour of rad hardened watchdogs that reset circuits that have been effected. This is a false economy as it won't help if a crcuit suffers permanent damage.

anarstromoner