Signs Of The Times 4/10/2020
A solar superstorm can make your lights go out.
New maps released by the USGS show where the power is most likely to fail: The Denver metropolitan area, the Pacific northwest, the Atlantic seaboard, and a cluster of Midwestern states near the US-Canadian Border. Bright yellow and orange trace the trouble spots across the contiguous USA:
Power companies have long been wary of the sun. Solar storms can cause strong electric currents to flow through commercial power lines--so strong that the lines can't handle it. Fuses blow, transformers melt, and circuit breakers trip. The most famous geomagnetic power outage happened during a space storm in March 1989 when six million people in Quebec lost power for 9 hours.
Whether or not *your* power goes out during a solar storm depends on two things: (1) The configuration of power lines in your area and (2) the electrical properties of the ground beneath your feet. In areas of more electrically resistive rock, currents struggle to flow through the ground. Instead, they leap up into overhead power lines - a scenario that played out in Quebec in 1989.
More:
https://www.sott.net/article/432250-Map-shows-where-US-power-grid-most-vulnerable-to-solar-storms
https://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2012/03/07/solar-storm-headed-for-texas-but-grid-should-be-fine/
But power grid operators in Texas aren’t expecting much effect. Dottie Roark, spokesperson for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which manages the electric grid for much of the state, says not to worry.
“Solar storms are mainly a factor in the upper latitudes because the Earth’s magnetic field acts as a shield against this type of solar weather,†she told StateImpact Texas collaborator KUT News. “So that shield is weakest at the north pole and the south pole, so that’s why it may affect some of the high latitudes more than here in our region.â€
