Has anybody read about the Carrington Event? According to the National Academy of Science, a "space storm" could produce a devastating apocalypse. The report provided "an estimate of $1 trillion to $2 trillion during the first year alone" and that "societal and economic costs of a 'severe geomagnetic storm scenario'" would have a "recovery time of 4 to 10 years."

Excerpt: "While a severe storm is a low-frequency-of-occurrence event, it has the potential for long-duration catastrophic impacts to the power grid and its users. Impacts would be felt on interdependent infrastructures, with, for example, potable water distribution affected within several hours; perishable foods and medications lost in about 12-24 hours; and immediate or eventual loss of heating/air conditioning, sewage disposal, phone service, transportation, fuel resupply, and so on. Kappenman stated that the effects on these interdependent infrastructures could persist for multiple years, with a potential for significant societal impacts and with economic costs that could be measurable in the several-trillion-dollars-per-year range."

http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12507#toc

Yes, that report is creepy. It would take so many years to restore the electrical grid's damaged hardware and every aspect of modern civilization, in the developed world, is dependent on electricity.

Think I saw something about the possibility on the Discovery or History Channels this winter.

Talk about a stimulus program, we'd all be put to work building transformers.

big article

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20....html?full=true

Interesting listing of past magnetic storms, replete with links to contemporaneous news articles.

http://www.solarstorms.org/SRefStorms.html

The shocking thing is that there are not enough transformers, so, without electricity, you can't build more -- and you can't get electricity without tranformers. It's a cascading effect situation that would be hard to recover from. Yikes.

So basically your normal preparations for loss of power should work, but you might be looking at a longer timeline.

Solar storms have caused power outages before, one example they give on page 16 and page 18 is the 1989 Quebec power outage.
Steps are being taken to make power systems less vulnerable. The fact that there are conferences like the one your link reports is actually encouraging.
The report is an interesting read, but not really earth shattering.

edit:
As they say on page 88,

My understanding is because of the tilt of the Earth the southern hemisphere wouldn't be as affected. Are there any manufacturers of these transformers in Australia, Africa or South America?

-Blast

I just found it interesting that sunspot activity had the potential for being such a devastating threat.
And while it is encouraging that these guys are thinking about it, I am not convinced they will DO anything about it. Having worked in government, I know how these guys think. Pearl Harbor and Hurricane Katrina come to mind . . .

There are two places this possible event shows up that you can get:

Scientific American, August 2008
Discovery Networks, "Perfect Storm", Season One,Episode 2: "Solar Storm"

I agree that the power grids are vulnerable and that the risks are high, but it still leaves me with the question of what I can do to reduce the effect on me and mine personally.

At the level I exist at it does not matter much if the cause is a solar flare or a winter ice storm.
I would still end up with no power. The additional problems like loss of GPS, telephone or radio communication and damaged computers are just icing on the cake.

That seems to put me back to preparing for it like almost any other power outage. (back up generator, heating, water, light, stored food, etc?)

I don't think it is quite fair to blame the govt for inaction in this case either.
There is the basic problem of business mathematics involved here too.
Power companies try to keep their costs down and most of the costs of power losses are not born by power companies. The large costs listed in the report are almost all losses of income to power users caused by loss of power, instead of out of pocket expenses. In other words, losses generalized to the economy.

The costs of upgrading the grid are out of pocket expenses to the power companies though, which they would have to pass directly to their customers.
This means they all have a real hard time justifying the expense to their accountants.

Anyhow, I have very little influence over the business decisions of large or small corporations.

So again I am left doing what I can to prepare at my level, and that means pretty basic and simple emergency preparations.

I would think that in such a serious crisis, companies should be able to spool up production of these transformers pretty quickly. At least I would hope so.

I wonder how many other electrical systems would be affected, computers, pacemakers, etc. I keep mentally comparing this to EMP, although it's not the same at all.

But the night time sky spectacular would look awesome that night and the next couple of years would allow me enough to time to learn the piano.. Those Las Vegas golf courses would get pretty stinky within a few weeks though.

On the bright side; if such an event occured, it would give the industry a good chance at upgrading the grid overall. That alone might be worth going without for a couple years.

I think that if electricity were truly out for a couple of years that you might want to rethink that statement. ;-) I'd much rather that we plan ahead and harden the infrastructure (with backups in storage) than have to live through it as a lesson learned.

For most people (including myself, a fairly prepared guy/family) this would be an unspeakable loss. The collateral damage would be so significant, it would make all other previous natural and unnatural disasters look like a walk in the park in comparison. Think about power/heat outages on the east coast of the US. Now multiply that to most of western civilization, and for good measure extend it from 1-2 weeks to 5-10 years. Wow. Massive civil unrest and crime, starvation, exposure - truly it would be TEOTWAWKI. Fun stuff I'm sure.

Anyway. I digress. :-) Shouldn't this whole thread be in the LongTerm/Natural Disaster forum?

That depends on where the Earth is in its orbit. In northern hemisphere summer the southern hemisphere is a little less vulnerable but in northern hemisphere winter the opposite is true.

And in any case if the major effect is the CME dropping The-Mother-Of-All-Charges on the ionosphere (think of it as a Cosmic Taser) then both day and night sides get it, in both hemispheres, possibly over a day or two.

I think the wording of the report leaves something to be desired. They don't put it in terms people are likely to understand.

The terminology is worded so that it is easy to jump to extreme conclusions. The phrase disruptions for several years might be interpreted as no power for years but the more logical conclusion is cycling brownouts with regular short-term disruptions during several years as power supply resources are juggled. The multi-trillion dollar loss figure seems to assume nobody does anything to compensate or correct. Most automated systems can be run manually but it takes more hands.

The wording about loss of fuel and medications seems needlessly alarmist because most of those systems have backup generation on hand. Reallocation of surviving power, portable generation and transfer of resources requiring power out of affected zones should minimize losses.

The transformers they are talking about are not the sort you see hanging on a power pole. The units they are talking about are quite large and quite expensive. Which tells you why there aren't many spares on hand. Until you need one they are very expensive paperweights. Most power companies, POCOs, are reluctant about keeping on hand a capital investment they may not need for two hundred years. And when you need it, seeing as that it has been sitting there for so long, there is a good chance it won't work or be compatible with the present days systems.

Last comparable even was " the great magnetic storm of May 14-15, 1921" roughly 88 years ago. Compare transformers from back then to present and you can see that laying in spares cannot be a complete solution. It may be possible to bulk-up the supply on hand if the POCOs were to cooperate and invest in a few but complete replacement isn't in the cards.

Also you have to read on page 79:
"With respect to the entire grid, remedial measures to reduce GIC levels are needed and are cost-effective. The installation of supplemental transformer neutral ground resistors to reduce GIC flows is relatively inexpensive, has low engineering trade-offs, and can produce 60-70 percent reductions of GIC levels for storms of all sizes."

I'm not sure why they chose to use the wording they did. A certain amount of flamboyance is justified to get attention but this seems a little too provocative. It might be interesting to find out who pushed for the report and who funded it. The 'push political agenda and control people by scaring the pants off them folks' are still out there.

While agree with what you are saying, let me give a counter point.

I don't think a worst case scenario is likely. BUT, if it should occur, we'll be pretty much pooched in the 1st and 2nd world. Saying we shouldn't worry and that the report is sensational and should be ignored is like saying that pandemic flu concerns are sensational and should be ignored. Instead, maybe we should look at what is needed to (a) prevent as much effect as possible (which we are doing) and (b) what will be needed to recover.

Although electricity is needed in the factories that produce transformers, this need not be grid power.
I would expect such facilities to receive a very high priority in the allocation of either generators or rationed grid power.
I believe that some factories have large generators, employed normally for testing purposes, these could of course be used to power the factories.

It would appear prudent for the government to subsidise the manufacture of a few spares, not throughout the nation but at a few key locations.
Since such large transformers are not easily or quickly transported, the spares should be held on site at the most important substations.
(some spares already exist, since although long lasting, they do sometimes fail in normal use)

Limited grid power can be supplied by much smaller transformers than the originalls, rolling blackouts being used to avoid overloading the smaller ones.
Smaller transformers can be made more quickly, and may be available from stock, unlike the largest which are built to order.

You can build transformers without power, you just need to wind some wire around a core. if every transformer in the world were dead, you could make a simple one by hand to get power to the tools to make better ones by machine.

Well, it's not like the transformers are just going to disintegrate. They might blow a winding or crack the core, or on some occasions they'll catch fire, but I suspect in most cases the overvoltage circuits will blow open and shut the circuit down entirely. With no load on the transformer output, the spike might not cause any problems (no load = no current). It might still arc internally if the voltage spike is big enough (similar to what an artificial emp or near lightning strike does to some sites). If that happens then you could just disassemble the transformer, find and repair any problems, and put it back together. Power tools make the work go faster, but they aren't necessary.

Now if the transformer catches fire, then that will go to the recycle bin. I got to see that happen a few times in Baghdad when the grid surged and overvoltaged some of the transformers (one in particular blew up near our office and had us heading for the bunker before we realized it wasn't another stinking mortar barrage. Funny thing, when the surge hit, you could see the power lines up on the poles dancing around some too.

I was referring to the notion that we needed working transformers to make more.

Yes, I understand. Whittling up a new core by hand would definitely be a pain.

Small transformers can indeed be made by hand, as a teenager I worked in a factory doing just that.

I dont believe though that the very large grid transformers could be made by hand. The materials and components are too big/heavy to handle without powered equipment.

Large transformers are immersed in steel tanks full of oil for cooling and electrical insulation.
The empty tank alone weighs many tonnes and is the size of a house.
The iron core is made up from many flat iron laminations, that must be carefully aligned. This is easily done by hand on a workbench for small transformers, in this case of the largest units this would be infeasible without powered machinery.

However as posted above, many transformer works have large diesel generators, and could continue production for a while.

A severe solar storm would be devasting, but would not result in a complete, long term, nationwide blackout.
A few spare transformers exist, and a few more could be manufactured quickly.
Not every transformer would be destroyed, some would be switched out for maintenance and therefore survive.
Districts near power stations can be supplied without the use of any very large transformers*
Diesel generators exist, and most oil refineries and pipelines would continue to operate, useing a small part of the fuel that they handle.

* For technical reasons, large power plants generate at a relativly low voltage (11,000 volts in the UK) This is then stepped up to much higher voltages (275,000 volts or 400,000 volts in the UK) for long distance transmission.
Nearer the point of use, the voltage is then stepped down to 11,000 volts, and then stepped down again to 240/415 volts for use.
Therefore in an emergency, power plants could supply the local 11,000 volt network directly.
High voltage overhead lines, could in emergency be energised at only 11,000 volts, to feed essiential facilities some distance away. This would greatly restrict the power available, perhaps to as little as 5% of normal, but that is lot better than nothing!
The small transformers used to step down from 11,000 volts to 240/415 are less liable to fail, are easily manufactured, and utilities hold stocks of spares.
(voltages in the USA are different, but the same principles apply)