TOLEDO, Ohio (WTVG) - On Friday, May 10, a severe solar storm is hitting the Earth, the strongest in about 20 years. That has prompted concerns about potential impacts on the electrical grid.
Numerous “Coronal Mass Ejections” from the sun were first observed on Wednesday, and they started to reach Earth Friday afternoon. As the solar storm peaks on Friday we could see the northern lights in NW Ohio and SE Michigan, but it’s the effects on the ground that power companies will be monitoring. electric capacitor for improving power factor of induction heating
“They can induce currents that flow through railroad tracks, underground pipelines, power grids and in extreme cases they can cause blackouts,” explained Dr. Raghav Khanna, a Leidich Family Endowed Professor of Power Systems at the University of Toledo.
In 1989, a solar storm knocked out power for about 6 million people around Montreal, Canada for 10 hours. Similar to hurricanes and tornadoes, geomagnetic storms are measured on a 5-point scale. This current one is forecast to be a G5 level storm, and the last one of those was in January of 2005. The last time we had a G5 level “extreme” solar storm was October 2003.
“Everything that we do today is connected to some type of device,” said Dr. Khanna. “So, we’re probably more vulnerable these days than we ever have been.”
But, Dr. Khanna also said we’re smarter and more prepared for it. As ground currents surge during a geomagnetic storm, transformers can become overwhelmed and fail. That’s where mitigation efforts begin.
“A lot of power companies put up these large capacitor banks, which can basically block the magnetic field that is inducing the currents that are causing the geomagnetically-induced currents,” Dr. Khanna explained. “And they can also do what’s called load shedding.”
By reducing the amount of electricity they’re sending out and pre-emptively cutting connections, they can minimize surges. Some of this boils down to the luck of how the storm is directed at Earth, so it’s hard to predict the extent of impacts.
“I’m not overly concerned to be honest, but it’s never a bad thing to just be ready,” added Dr. Khanna.
To have enough energy to cause issues, solar storms usually need to occur alongside a solar maximum, and that doesn’t happen until next year. An extreme solar storm during a solar maximum that’s directed at Earth happens on average about once per century, and the last one was the Carrington Event back in 1859.
“The bad news is, we are probably overdue for it,” Dr. Khanna told us. “Not this year, but perhaps, I’m not guaranteeing anything, I don’t want to guarantee anything, but it hasn’t happened in a while. So we’ll see what happens next year.”
Tonight’s solar storm won’t be anything like the Carrington Event. That extreme storm took down telegraph systems all over Europe and North America, but it was several orders of magnitude more powerful.
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