🧵 Can science save the grid?
Anonymous at Thu, 6 Jun 2024 16:16:00 UTC No. 16216838
Heliophysics
Can we save the grid or are we doomed? It is estimated that a geomagnetic storm can cause 2 trillion worth of economic damage. You can’t print your way out of this crisis because it takes human labor to replace the power grid
Anonymous at Thu, 6 Jun 2024 16:24:25 UTC No. 16216879
>>16216838
Like all end-of-the-world scenarios, you have to factor in the likelihood of the event happening. COULD a solar event mess up our electrics? Yes. Is it likely to happen? Fuuuuuuck no.
Anonymous at Thu, 6 Jun 2024 17:24:18 UTC No. 16217137
>>16216838
We're doomed, even though we have the technology for mitigating its effects. There's been no hardening of the grid because the FERC has no authority to mandate any reliability standards, and there's been no federal rules on grid reliability since the utility companies basically own the chairman of the house energy and commerce committee, so not a single proposed bill has even made IR to the floor for a vote.
The main problem is that we can't replace all of the high voltage transformers that we would need in the event of a strong geomagnetic storm. Current production capacity is less than 100 per year, with 1-3 year lead times on orders, and the only countries that produce them are Germany and south Korea. Utilities don't want to be required to order spares since they cost ~10 million USD which is why they've basically killed any sort of laws demanding grid hardening measures.
Anonymous at Thu, 6 Jun 2024 17:31:23 UTC No. 16217176
>>16217137
So you’re saying it’s just not economically viable? Makes sense they wouldn’t put that much money into it considering. It’s pure speculation but it did happen in the 80s in the Middle East so it’s not that far fetched.
Anonymous at Thu, 6 Jun 2024 17:43:42 UTC No. 16217247
>>16217176
It's much less rare than you'd think. We've already had catastrophic failures from relatively mild storms https://www.ferc.gov/sites/default/
We just got lucky that they were in places where power could be diverted from other sources until they could be replaced. It would take as few as 9 critical transformers failing to cause coast to coast blackouts in the US.
It would definitely cost more to fix things afterwards, but the utility companies are basically just not planning for the long term at all