Solar Storm - Electrical Grid

Just watched one of the "Doomsday - 10 ways the Earth might end" on The History Channel last night.
Many of the 10 ways are completely and I won't even bother watching, but a few of them have merit. This one was about a coronal mass ejection from the sun, and this is apparently a very valid issue as The Carrington Event of 1859 took out the "grid" of the day - which was the telegraph system.

A smaller one more recently shut down much of Quebec in 1989 for several hours, so again - this has merit.
I doo remember that one - now that they mentioned it. Not so much the 1859 event tho...

They said that this is believed to be a "once every hunderd years" event, but I don't know who was documenting this prior to the 1859 event? Nor doo I expect that they can guess that the 1859 event was as big as to be expected?


Now - for the sake of the show, they of course are using the worstest case scenario that they can think of, or can pay some physicist (that wants to be on camera) to say...


It shows how transformers all over the world will burn up, and even the high tension lines could even burn up and disappear altogether. (really?)

BUT!

It shows cars, and gen sets still opperable, so not exactly the same expected outcome as an overhead nuke.

AND!

They tell that there will be 17 hours of notification before it hits. Apparently plasma (?) doesn't travel at the speed of light. (who knew?)

SO!

How's come - with that much notification, why couldn't they simply shut down the whole works? Throw every disconnect, put every X out off line, take all load off the high tensions, and idle the gen stations?

Of course you can take a whole gen station offline, they doo it all the time when it's upgrade or maintenance time.


Now they made mention several times to Congressional Hearings on the subject 10 yrs ago (Yankees), but in the end - they apparently didn't see the need to intervene. Maybe it's b/c what I stated above can be done, and is the plan if/when one of these is known to be inbound?


I know that there has got to be a few sparky's out there that like to dabble in this type info, and read your science mags like I read machining mags, so - what is the "other side" of this issue?


Watch Solar Storm Full Episode - Doomsday: 1 Ways the World Will End | HISTORY

Solar storm of 1859 - Wikipedia

March 1989 geomagnetic storm - Wikipedia

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I am Ox and I approve this h'yah post!

It comes down to what the thing induces. I kinda don't believe in the wires disappearing deal, it would take a level of induction that frankly would cause a LOT more trouble than wires, to do that, as I see it.

Most smaller events, and quite a bit of the Nuke scenarios, would first take out a lot of protective stuff. There is a LOT of protection on the grid. There was zip on the old telegraph lines. The grid is expected to take lightning hits, and does every day, without interruptions of power.

The amount of distributed protection is really quite large, so a big event would also affect enough area that it would involve tens of thousands of protective devices, and I am referring to things like spark gaps, thyrite type overvoltage protectors, etc.

Not suggesting there would, or could, be no damage, but there is likely to be far less than the worst case scenarios suggest. I think most of those have assumed no protections are in place, mostly because it is VERY hard to predict what would happen if you DO include them. Far simpler to model it as a system without those.

In other places, where the grid is not as protected, it is quite possible that there would be more damage, and even serious long term interruption from even a medium-small event.

protections could be better than they are. Protection against local lightning is not the same as protection against a global event. But a global event would involve a very large number of protectors intended for lightning. A severe event might well have a longer recovery. The idea of all transformers being melted, and wires disappearing, well, that's not likely. There would have to be a field inducing about 1 volt per foot across the country. Over a hundred miles, the field would need to induce a half million volts, in what is effectively one turn of an air-core coil. Not impossible, but not easy. And that is just to get the current that COULD raise the wire to melting temperature. A hundred miles of wire has a good deal of mass, so it would take some time to do the melting.

If a larger current is proposed, one which would vaporize he wire, then the induced voltage has to be higher as well. probably a good deal higher, I have not looked into that.

In the nuke scenario, you need to add up the energy requirements of each item of damage, and compare it to the available energy from the nuke, spread out over the area supposed to be damaged. A good bit of the energy of the nuke goes in other directions, or is released in other ways, heat, light, etc, and is not available as EMP. They release a good deal of energy, but it is definitely not infinite.

It would not be ideal, and would definitely cause damage, but it seems unlikely to return civilization to the stone age, as has been reported by sensationalists. If additional precautions were taken, the damage could be further limited.

I understand that in some tests, protective equipment of some types was used, and generally did it's job, although fuses had to be replaced, etc, and some insulators were damaged.

Why won't we shut everything down and ride out the event? (I will)

Is the same reason that the Y2K "thing" was a silent disappointment. The masses just won't believe it either could or can't "ever happen to them".

I'm not a sensationalist, nor a preper ( but I did by a 5 lb bag of rolled oats in Dec, 1999 ;-)
But if I had a few hours notice, I would give up the TV to mark the event.

Annecdote

We had a snow here yesterday that took down the power lines from about 8 pm till noon today. We heat with wood, have a pair of Aladdin oil lamps and many flash lights and batteries. The wife and I took a walk in the darkness and quiet. It was nice!

Ok then, what is different now/here than Qubec/1989?


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I am Ox, and I approve this h'yah post!

Ox said:

Ok then, what is different now/here than Qubec/1989?

Click to expand...

Smart regulation of the grid.

As you stated, Quebec was shut down for a few hours. Nothing major happened due to protection systems doing their job.

With our increased reliance on satellites for navigation, particularly self driving vehicles, what problems would that cause. Cars and trucks stop where they are, continue using the last vectors? Are these vehicles tested for that by abruptly shutting off communications and/or false data caused by voltage spikes?

Grab your tent and trenching tool. Time to camp.

Tom

So Google and other companies dabbling in the self driving vehicle field go bankrupt, 'cause they've lost all their equipment. Meanwhile, I get to sell a lot of Lithium that ended up in my yard for scrap. This is a bad thing?

Dennis

"With our increased reliance on satellites for navigation, particularly self driving vehicles, what problems would that cause. "

Probably less than the problems that all the jerks cause today with texting and phoning while driving.

Possibly some sort of limited event that knocked out all the cell phone service for a short time each day. For
example, while I'm driving to and from work....

=)

the issue with the grid is quite simply, 1 to 10 volts dc showing up, per kilometer, between the top of the transmission line and the ground.

because the neutral is grounded at both ends of the thousand mile long transmission lines.. and the lines are very high.. you can get 10 to 1000 amps of dc flowing through the neutral. this causes the transformer core to saturate. (the actual dc current is on the order of 10 to 100% of the ac current already flowing through the transformer) (this is really just a coincidence that the impedance of a solar event is on the order of the impedance of practical high tension power lines, there is no threat of the powerlines melting.

the saturation causes the transformer to go into melt down. the harmonic current drawn during this saturation may not even be registered correctly by the current transformers, because they are also saturated by the dc current...

i can't recall where to find the research paper, but the US gov spent some money actually investigating this and found that for about 50,000$ per "large" transformer... you can simply open the neutral and put a capacitor in series. (a large one, but not rediculously large) and a resistor. in my opinion this should already have been done.

there has been some speculation that the low level dc currents always flowing through long east-west lines due to the earths magnetic field moving around is already causing increased transformer losses.. on the order of just a few percent. hard to measure, but non zero impact on the lifetime of the transformer..

there are several problems with lifting the neutral. the only one i can remember is the potential transformers at the substation also have to have their ground lifted and reconnected. current transformers installed at "ground" potential may have to be redesigned for 10 kvdc to possibly be present. transformers with internal neutral connections welded to the case will have to be re built. not that i know of any of those.

and the other problem with the grid as it is now, is those potential transformers and current transformers are not set up or designed to measure dc current.

so they don't even know if they have a serious solar event going on.

There are generally fuses in-circuit, that should be insensitive to frequency, and would just blow on DC or AC whatever. Seems that fusing would be fairly cheap, the surge could be compared to asymmetrical amps due to shorts, which are protected against as it stands now. Transformers have huge heat capacities, and will not melt down rapidly.

And, the current flow, would be primary-side, as DC does not go through.

then also, most long-distance lines are non-grounded delta, they have "potential grounds", not solid ones, Most lines can tolerate a single grounded line, but will then indicate an issue. They would not HAVE a neutral in the way that a wye service does, and induction would be equal on all 3 lines.

Now, local lines may have neutrals, most will. But. local lines have lots of fuses. There's a set on the 3 phase feeder behind the houses across the street. The fuses are at the end of the block, I've seen them. The line is a branch feeder that goes to the west of us. There is a transformer the size of a small house that supplies that line and others. It, too, has fuses, as they have blown before due to grounded lines north of us. I've investigated when power goes out, I find that if you can give the power co specific info about a line down, you get up to the top of the list of repairs, as they know who and what to send. So I do.

Still, inducing DC is a hard thing to do. I'd like to see the mechanism, because a surge has a volt-second product and if that does not exceed the transformer's capacity, will not saturate it.

the 1 to 10 volts per kilometer is there for minutes. i'm not sure what the upper limit is. maybe an hour.

its caused by the earths magnetic field moving due to electrical current flowing through space.. from the sun.. this is the very short version....

Well it's possible.

You have a magnetic field, and you move a conductor through it, you get a voltage. If you have an external magnetic field that is relatively constant over a large area, then if you move a conductor through it at a constant rate, you get some voltage along the wire, and it will be as constant as the field and the movement is. Not a nuke scenario, but possible with solar events.

In such a case, the fuses and breakers should act before transformers melt or are damaged, that's what they are designed to do. Even if they do not respond to DC, they surely will respond to the AC currents that flow due to core saturation that cuts the primary inductance of the transformer down to the leakage inductance. Even then, the AC currents will be limited by the resistance and leakage inductances. The "event" would be similar to a short applied to the line.

Taking 4/0 cable as an example, at about 0,045 ohm per 1000 feet..... that's about 0.15 ohm per km. So 10 volts per km would cause about 66A. Enough to saturate a transformer, but not enough to damage it by itself, if the transformer is likely to have 4/0 cable attached. That should hold good for larger cable as well. The resistance of the windings at both ends would cut the current even more, so 66 amps is high.

Then also, the long delta transmission lines. with impedance or resistance grounding, will not tend to put DC through the transformers. That has to occur in a wye setup, although it is not 100% clear how that occurs when the ground return and wire are relatively close together. I suppose because they are never reversed, as the 3 phase wires are, and possibly also due to how currents flow in the ground.

Now, whether there is enough protection installed to deal with this, is the question. I believe so, as the same sorts of issues can occur normally. Wires fall, transformers fail, generators get a short applied. The protections are intended to protect against such things and prevent damage.

What may not be protected as wel is the large scale of voltages applied by a nuke. The EMP applies a unit energy to everything at once, a sort of Dirac delta pulse, and that is equal to "X" number of lightning strikes per mile over the length of the line. Could be an issue, but probably there is a set of protections that would minimize damage.

The capacitor bank in series is good for the DC deal. Not sure it is needed, and screwing around with series capacitors in the power grid is dicey. Things can happen as the load changes. It;s not totally uncommon when used as a compensating technique, but as the load changes, the "Q" of the circuit changes, and voltages can go awry. Somewhat like "balance" caps on the generated leg of an RPC, and for some of the same reasons.

couple problems.

the dc current causes the ac current transformers to saturate.. thus they don't read anything.

secondly. the saturated core causes the magnetic field to go elsewhere.. heating other steel hardware. in the case of the 1989 blackout, the transformer failed when the steel clamping hardware for the core heated up red hot, causing the insulation of one of the main winging to fail if i recall correctly.

as you mention the delta connected systems should not be affected. the delta connected lines are probably grounded through a zig zag transformer on both ends. dc current flowing through the zig zag transformers in a loop, formed by the loop area of the high tension lines 200? feet off the ground, will only saturate the zig zag transformer and that is not a great expense.

its the wye connected lines that are grounded at the neutral on both ends that are a problem.

far as i know most of the high voltage lines are wye, because the insulation in the transformer takes up significantly less space.

Ac current transformers OK, but no fuses? Fuses would fix that issue fast. There are usually fuses in distribution systems, such as the ones I mentioned at the end of the block, which are upstream of all the pole pigs.

Fuses are not sensitive to anything but RMS current, AC. DC, whatever.

The magnetic field does not quite "go elsewhere", the core carries what it can, holding it saturated, then the extra that the core cannot carry is free to get into structural stuff, yes. But again, fuses fix that right away. And they cost one heck of a lot less than capacitors or transformers.

Very high voltage is a separate issue. Fuses are not.so common for them as for medium voltage.

However, as I understand it, most high voltage transmission lines are delta, and do not carry a neutral, so the problem does not arise. While the insulation may be more expensive, there is a large saving in the elimination of the extra wire.

I thought a large amount of long-distance power transmission in the US was done
with dc.

jim rozen said:

I thought a large amount of long-distance power transmission in the US was done
with dc.

Click to expand...

Not yet. There is the Pacific Intertie, and there are other projects. It's being thought about, for sure, and has been done for underwater cable and other such for decades. Involves a LOT of very fancy electronic, fancy in terms of control, the actual system concept is not that complex.

Electronics are necessarily more fragile than insulated copper wire on iron cores. And they go obsolete much faster. Both things tend to make problems take much longer to resolve in case of damage. The intertie has huge specialty thyratrons, which are slated to be replaced by solid state devices. And they are located in basketball court sized rooms insulated with ceramic all over. Probably a couple dozen folks in the world really understand how to do those things right.

But, high voltage DC would tend to shrug off DC that might be induced, and potentially could USE the added power. All depends on the safety margins and the amount of induction.

JST said:

However, as I understand it, most high voltage transmission lines are delta, and do not carry a neutral, so the problem does not arise. While the insulation may be more expensive, there is a large saving in the elimination of the extra wire.

Click to expand...

they don't run the extra wire. they just ground the neutral at both ends. there isn't but a fraction of a percent of current flowing through it.

all they need to is put a dc current transformer in the neutral connection to ground and wire that up to the circuit breakers, alarm systems, etc. but they won't even do that. allegedly.

How is a CME different than one of the US's EMP weapons, other than a CME could be several orders of magnitude larger in both intensity and duration? There are speculative? stories about how getting Baghdad's electrical grid up and functioning took much longer than expected due to amount of damage to transformers from EMP weapon usage.

gbent said:

How is a CME different than one of the US's EMP weapons, other than a CME could be several orders of magnitude larger in both intensity and duration? There are speculative? stories about how getting Baghdad's electrical grid up and functioning took much longer than expected due to amount of damage to transformers from EMP weapon usage.

Click to expand...

There is some fringe. . Noise....to the effect that we blew up a neutron bomb on our own people during that war.

Anyhow. The emp from a nuke is a short burst of electrical charge that produces a voltage gradient that arrives on the order of magnitude of 50kv/m in a time span of 100ns.

Solar flares push the earth's magnetic field around producing 1 to 10 volts per kilometer on overhead wires.

Litterally a billion times slower, and a billion times less voltage.

Nuclear EMP has to be in the upper atmosphere, AFAIK, no way to do that in a stealthy fashion, and the effects are wide area. But a non-nuclear but explosively powered EMP is much easier. No one would notice it going off with the middle of a battle.

Explosively pumped flux compression generator - Wikipedia

To give you an idea of how well prepared our electrical grid is for this sort of thing: Recently, the power went out at my home (North Hollywood) for a few hours in the middle of the night and the power at my office (Hollywood, CA), was 72V all day until they got it fixed at around 8 pm.

This was because of LIGHT RAIN.

I'm serious. LA DWP claimed the rain was the cause as reported on the radio.

If our (LA) grid can't handle light rain, any type of CME or EMP is going to shut this city down.

johansen said:

There is some fringe. . Noise....to the effect that we blew up a neutron bomb on our own people during that war.

Anyhow. The emp from a nuke is a short burst of electrical charge that produces a voltage gradient that arrives on the order of magnitude of 50kv/m in a time span of 100ns.

Solar flares push the earth's magnetic field around producing 1 to 10 volts per kilometer on overhead wires.

Litterally a billion times slower, and a billion times less voltage.

Click to expand...