Power grids face unexpected slow-burn threat from solar storms
A new study reveals that severe geomagnetic storms can pose an unexpected slow-burn threat to power grids, causing prolonged, low-level currents that can overheat and damage transformers. This finding, based on a 2015 storm in New Zealand, suggests existing monitoring tools may not adequately capture these long-duration effects. Researchers traced the cause to a possible 'mid-latitude ionospheric current wedge'.
Why it matters
This research highlights a previously underestimated vulnerability in global power infrastructure, emphasizing the need for improved space weather monitoring and grid resilience strategies to prevent potential widespread blackouts and equipment damage.
As countries electrify more of their economies and increasingly interconnect their power grids, understanding space weather has become crucial. One particularly adverse form of space weather is a geomagnetic storm : temporary disturbances in earth’s magnetic field caused by charged particles from the sun. These storms produce beautiful aurorae but also induce strong yet short-lived currents in the grid.
However, a new study in Space Weather has reported that these storms can also stress power grids in a hitherto unexpected way and that existing tools may not fully capture the effects. The findings are centred on a geomagnetic storm in June 2015 that the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Centre had rated G4, or ‘severe’, and which produced a strange effect in New Zealand.
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