Geomagnetic Storms Could Blow Away the Power Grid [View all]

[Ilsa]

http://smartenergyportal.net/article/geomagnetic-storms-could-blow-away-power-grid-fixes-are-possible-when-and-if-we-get-concerne?YM_MID=1296124&YM_RID=kdl8%40pge.com


Geomagnetic Storms Could Blow Away the Power Grid: Fixes are Possible When And If We Get Concerned Enough

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It took the 12 hour Northeast blackout of 1965, which knocked out power to 30 million customers, to get us seriously working on coordinated, interstate transmission standards. The result was the formation of the North American Reliability Council (NERC) in 1968. We can also thank the disaster for pushing the development of transmission SCADA and programmable relays. There have been other less spectacular area-wide transmission outages since then (particularly in the Northeast for some reason). These have also resulted in major (overdue) operating changes.

Waiting for disasters to occur in order to take action may save a few bucks, but sometimes the potential risk is so high you can’t afford to let happenstance happen. You don’t want to check for a possible retinal aneurism by continuing to lift weights at the gym!

When we discuss grid security we usually are thinking ‘cyber-security’. But the power system is far more vulnerable to other types of attacks, such as physical destruction of critical system components. These mostly go ignored. (see Cyber-threat or Cyber-hype?)

Then there’s the 800 pound-gorilla-sleeping-in-the-closet threat: a geomagnetic storm which, if big enough, could shut down the world’s power grids so destructively that they would be out for weeks, possibly months.

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