MDinana:
The insulation, those glass knobs and ceramic plates on power lines, is for electrical insulation of the power line from the ground.

It does nothing to insulate against the Magnetic effects that solar flares produce on the Earth's Magnetic field.
To insulate against magnetic effects you would need to build Faraday cages around all of the transmission line.
That is not going to happen.

It is the change in the Earth's magnetic field that induces the currents in the wires of the power lines and in the computer circuits.
This is much like how a generator works. A magnet is moved past a loop of wire.
The moving magnet forces an electrical current to flow in the loop of wire.

A solar flare changes the shape of the earth's magnetic field, it makes it wobble. That is like moving a very big magnet.

The change in the Earth's magnetic field turns long loops of electrical wires into generator windings.
Hydro transmisson lines are very long.
They are effectively loops of wire because to conduct electricity they have to be a complete circuit

Computers can be protected by being put in metal boxes or wire cages as magnetic shielding.

Long distance hydro lines can not be put inside metal boxes, but the lines can be provided with over current protectors.

One trick is to put more isolation transformers into long tranmission lines to break them into shorter lengths.

Another is to put surge protectors on the lines that will ground or disconnect short sections of them if there is a sudden current rise.

To protect home electronics storing it in metal boxes, not keeping it plugged in, not having it connected to an long antenna will all help.

You can expect there to be more problems with the satellite systems too.


JCWohlschlag said that so much easier and clearly than I just did, but I really wanted to see if I could