If a solar flare on the scale of the September 1, 1859 Carrington Event (named after solar astronomer Richard Carrington who observed it from England) were to happen today we would very quickly revert to a much more primitive level of living that would last for months or years. No electricity means no water. No water means death.
According to the NAS report, a severe space weather event in the US could induce ground currents that would knock out 300 key transformers within about 90 seconds, cutting off the power for more than 130 million people (see map). From that moment, the clock is ticking for America.
First to go - immediately for some people - is drinkable water. Anyone living in a high-rise apartment, where water has to be pumped to reach them, would be cut off straight away. For the rest, drinking water will still come through the taps for maybe half a day. With no electricity to pump water from reservoirs, there is no more after that.
There is simply no electrically powered transport: no trains, underground or overground. Our just-in-time culture for delivery networks may represent the pinnacle of efficiency, but it means that supermarket shelves would empty very quickly - delivery trucks could only keep running until their tanks ran out of fuel, and there is no electricity to pump any more from the underground tanks at filling stations.
These transformers normally take a year to build each. More than just these key transformers would be damaged.
The truly shocking finding is that this whole situation would not improve for months, maybe years: melted transformer hubs cannot be repaired, only replaced.
What I would like to know: How much do these transformers cost? How much would it cost to build duplicates of these transformers and some other key equipment so that we could restore electric power at least for water and a few other key functions in a matter of days or weeks?
BTW, ever notice how much more severe the 19th century was in terms of solar and geological events as compared to the 20th century and early 21st century? The 19th century witnessed the Carrington Event along with the Tambora eruption in 1815 and Krakatoa in 1883. Plus, the 19th century began at the tail end of the Little Ice Age and the Dalton Minimum of sunspot activity lasted till 1820. In the 21st century we could easily get walloped by natural processes just as severe. We can afford to be far better prepared. Why not make at least some of the preparations?
Update: We should also prepare a planetary defense against asteroids.
By Randall Parker at 2009 March 29 11:18 AM Dangers Natural GeneralNote that the magnetic effects reached Earth after a delay of hours. This would allow time to prepare and to shut systems down to prevent damage; it is much quicker to bring powerplants back up after a planned shutdown than to rebuild the transformers and switchgear.
If our grid managers are as smart as I think they are, they're ready for this. They may even be ready to e.g. ground all phases of long-distance power lines to prevent arcing at the ends that might damage the disconnects. Once the event is past, remove the grounding bars, check the systems out, and roll repair crews—but that should be a lot less hassle than fixing major EMP damage.
Say, Randall, any chance of putting permalinks on comments to make it more convenient to bookmark the last-seen spot in a discussion?
E-P,
The full text of the article (it is 3 pages - did you read them all?) says that sometimes the event comes at the Earth too quickly for warning. Also (and see the 3rd page) our warning satellite that might give us the needed 15 minutes of warning is old and could fail at any time.
I also wonder whether the proper procedures are in place to bring down the whole grid before something like that hits.
Permalinks on comments: I'm sure there's a way to do that. If someone who knows MovableType wants to tell me how I'll change the template. I'll see what I can find on my own.
E-P,
I made a stab at comment permalinks (which is something I've wanted for a long time - so thanks for bugging me about it). See if this works for you.
E-P,
I've got comment permalinks working in some places. They'll show up in more places as pages get regenerated. They should show up in all comments views but not on all single post views.
I missed the "only minutes" at the end of the article; the question is, how frequently does the particle storm follow the flare that closely? If it does come too quickly for the decision-making system to proactively shut down vulnerable systems, can we trip safeties before equipment is damaged? This I do not know, but I hope someone's working on it.
Great to see comment permalinks regardless of what it takes to put them on existing pages.
No water from taps in high-apartment. Die of thirst or walk down stairs and get water. Bottled water or go to where working pumps are.
Plus this would only hit on one side of the planet. Plus not every station would get knocked out.
ABB has emergency transformers
http://www.utilityproducts.com/display_article/334836/129/none/none/Indus/ABB-Transformers-Provide-Emergency-Relief-for-Iowa-Flood-Victim
Plus aircraft carriers, cruise ships with water purification and other facilities can be docked at places like New York.
However, it is prudent to put up a few more satellites and make the grid more robust. Robotic systems to rapidly ground the facilities.
New superconductor components for fast handling of power spikes etc...
How much would it cost to built the equipment from scratch as opposed to surrounding the transformers with a faraday cage (just in case)?
Faraday caging the transformers would be ineffective as the overload is induced in the wires, and the overload is conducted into the transformers. Shielding the wires would be uneconomic, requiring more towers to sustain the added weight of insulation and shielding. This would increase the vulnerability of the grid to the more-common ice storm in an effort to protect against the less-common solar CME.
The transformers are nowhere near big enough to induce damaging currents in them directly; if they were, individual humans would be also.
The simple way to prevent damage is to disconnect the transformers from their lines, and ground the lines to prevent arcing. Knowing WHEN to do this, and keeping the control systems up and running as the magnetic storm strikes... aye, there's the rub!
60 or 50 cycle electric current and big fat transformers are old technology now.
The best way to transmit electrical energy long distances now is at high DC voltage using high-frequency DC-to-DC power converters.
If many old, legacy technology transformers were damaged then the quickest way to replace them would be as a forced upgrade to the more modern DC transmission technology.
DC into homes? Why not? It is certainly safer, as Thomas Edison aptly demonstrated over 100 years ago.
I can't tell if you're joking, George. Edison's campaign was deeply dishonest. And I'm not sure how you propose to deal with the resistive losses associated with DC. Switchmode power supplies are great, but DC distribution systems don't make sense for anything bigger than a server room.
High voltage DC != regular DC. The resistances are completely different...
Grounding the power lines at the ends? Watch out - you may have just created a giant CURRENT LOOP consisting of the lines and the earth return path. The huge geomagnetic-induced current in the lines, returning through the earth, would probably burn out the lines instantly - the same current that would burn out the transformers if they were still connected. Leaving the lines open would cause high voltage arcing. No easy solutions exist except possibly large resistors at the ground connections that limit both the closed-circuit current and open-circuit voltage as a balanced compromise, but good luck choosing the resistor value and wattage!
A carrington event would fry most of the satellites in orbit, The International Space station crew would die of radiation exposure, and if it didn't kill them quick, the sudden and complete failure of all electrical system on the ISS would kill them. The geomagnetic field of earth would go haywire, most likely magnetic compasses would be useless, older aircraft could fly after the initial event, but would have to have good visual flight conditions to follow roads and highways for navigation, or use a vacuum operated gyro compass. Radio communications would be jammed for awhile, and allot of radio equipment would be ruined as well. Ships at see would have to revert to sextants to navigate since GPS, LORAN-C and OMEGA navigational gear would be useless. People with pacemakers would probably die from the interference. Our population density is far too high to loose transport, we'd run out of food quick. Most modern vehicles wouldn't run anyway due to the electronic fuel injections, older vehicles (think VW bugs, and willys jeeps, chevels, etc.) with breaker point ignition would run, electronic clocks, etc would be useless. Grandfather clocks, wind up watches, etc would run.
on the subject of electricity, AC transmits far better than DC, even at high voltage dc loss due to resistance is outrageous. Transformers will fry due to the DC induced in the windings on top of a ac field, large capacitors could be installed on at the transformers to filter some out, and heavy resistors could be installed on the ground lines to reduce the ground current feeding back up the ground lines into the gear, this would allow the electrical grid to operate longer before they would have to shut down.