This article from Reuters indicates that the sun will enter its most highly active phase of an 11 year cycle in the year 2000.

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/ts/story.html?s=v/nm/19990309/ts/space_1.html

"Fiery S-shapes on the Sun's surface can help predict when potentially dangerous and disruptive blasts of electrically charged gas will come hurtling toward Earth, scientists said Tuesday.

Such massive solar explosions pack the force of billions of nuclear blasts and can knock out power grids, damage satellites and scramble communications networks, so forecasting them is becoming increasingly important.

Until now, scientists have only been able to tell that one of these big solar blasts had already occurred, which still gave Earth two to three days to prepare while the blast traveled toward the planet."

"... These massive blasts, which scientists call coronal mass ejections (CMEs), are likely to be more frequent in 2000 as the Sun moves into the most active year of its 11-year cycle of activity.

CMEs are the largest explosions in the solar system, hurling up to 10 billion tons of gas into space at speeds of 1 billion to 2 billion miles an hour (1.6 billion to 3.2 billion km an hour), several times a day. Not every CME is aimed at Earth."

Just another thing to add to the old worry chart.

-- Anonymous, March 10, 1999

Answers

http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast09mar99_1.htm

has cool images and a "movie" on this.

-- Anonymous, March 10, 1999

CMEs are a normal part of the sun's activities. Every 11 years, when the sun enters its peak active period, CME occurances increase.

It's unlikely that a CME can directly cause a blackout. More likely, and still very unlikely, is the possibility that the ejecta from a CME can cause a very energetic geomagnetic (refers to the Earth's natural magnetic field) storm. The changes in magneic flux can induce currents in long wires, such as power transmission wires, and cause overloads in transformers, which would cause a power outage in the area of the failure. Would this cause a blackout? No more and no less than a transformer failure from any other cause.

If such a failure were to occur, the CME would have to be very energetic, and the Earth would have to be directly in the path of the most dense region of the ejecta.

In addition, the likelihood that a CME induced overload is further reduced by the fact that the ejecta takes about 3 days to reach the Earth, but is observed by deep space satellites as the CME occurs. That gives us 2 - 3 days warning, so the industry can be ready for any fireworks.

A side effect of such an event is a truly magnificent auroral display.

LP

-- Anonymous, March 12, 1999

LP

What do the utilities do to preapre for CME overload conditions even if they can predict them in advance?

-- Anonymous, March 12, 1999

"What do the utilities do to preapre for CME overload conditions even if they can predict them in advance?" -- Joseph D. Deni II

Joseph,

Since I am not an EU employee (I work in microwave and RF electronics for a living; I study solar dynamics in my spare time), I can't speak for any electric company, but I can speculate.

It seems reasonable that EU sector employees would prepare for a solar/geostorm-induced overload in the same way they would prepare for an overload that would stem from other sources.

In this case, preventative measures would focus on limiting the effects of an EMF (voltage) induced in the transmission wires. This is not hard to do in principle, and I would not be surprised to learn that some northernmost EU companies have done just that, since they would be more severely affected by geostorm effects than EU companies in lower latitudes.

One problem that comes to mind is the sheer number of transmission wires that exist today. Overload circuits are not cheap, and it's reasonable to assume that the typical EU company would choose to omit them in those parts of their domain that they (through some mechanism) have determined is at a lower risk of exposure to this effect than other parts. Thus, in the event of a severe geostorm-induced overload, the liklihood that the overload will occur in the unprotected parts of the system increases. Sadly, budgetary considerations play a role, here, too.

Protection circuits can help prevent overloads, but not 100% of the time. Additional measures should be taken to reduce the chances of an overload. This is where the SCADA system can help. From my reading, it seems that SCADA can be configured to react to an overload from sensor input data, and send commands to the rest of service area immediately surrounding the overload to switch out the affected area, thus isolating it. Damage, and the size of the outage are minimized. The system is adjusted to the new load, and normal operations continue until repairs are completed. However, the area that has been switched out would be without power until the repairs are finished.

In addition to all this is the heightened awareness by EU workers that the possibility of a geostorm-induced overload increases when projections show that the ejecta from a CME would intercept the Earth's orbit at the same time and place as the Earth. As I mentioned in my first post, this can be determined with good accuracy as much as 2 or 3 days before the ejecta arrives. This would give EU workers time to check inventories, run systems checks, and whatever else they may want to do to be ready to react as quickly as possible to any overload that may occur.

If a baseball team knows that the likelihood is high that the batter will bunt, the players adjust their positions on the field accordingly, and thus have a better chance to throw out the base runner that the batter wants to advance.

After all is said and done, geostorm-induced overloads can occur, just as the prepared baseball team fails to throw out the base runner. In the best of all possible worlds, we could probably rebuild the electric distribution system so that no length of transmission wire over a pre-determined length limit would be installed without protection circuits. Unfortunately, this isn't the best of all possible worlds. Maybe next time.

In summary, a combination of hardware, software, and heightened awareness of unusual atmospheric conditions all contribute to the ability of an EU company to cope with a geostorm-induced overload. They know what can happen, and why; they just don't know when or where, or how intense the storms will be. They can thus minimize the possibility of an outage, but not eliminate it.

That's my guess, and I could be completely wrong. An EU employee would probably be better able to answer your question.

LP

-- Anonymous, March 13, 1999

It's clear then that CME adds to the level of complexity in dealing with Y2K because many of the systems for monitoring and controling the effects may be limited, disfunctional or non-existant.

-- Anonymous, March 16, 1999

Joseph,

It is to me, regardless of the state of health of the system. An additional potential overload source will indeed complicate matters, and a partially or completely disabled system will only make it worse.

I'm not too concerned about it simply because I know there is nothing I can do about it. All I can do is wait, and observe.

-- Anonymous, March 16, 1999