Author Topic: Solar EMP and Solar Panels  (Read 16654 times)

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wilfor03

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Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« on: August 30, 2010, 09:52:10 AM »
My Son has been talking about the "Giant" Solar Flares" that NASA has predicted for the year 2012-2013. They say this could shut down the the entire grid of the US (and the world) for weeks/months/years? My question is: How will this affect "off-grid" solar/wind turbines, batterys, etc. Is there anyway to build faraday shields to counter this EMP or something? Just wanted to throw this out for the board "at large". This may not be the correct place for this question, so feel free to move it if ya want......Bill   :'(
Bill

Beaufort

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #1 on: August 30, 2010, 10:04:21 AM »
Excellent question!  I'm curious to see what other replies are, because these kinds of events are why many of us choose to go off grid.  My understanding is that long wire runs lead to large voltage differences during solar activity, and thereby "zapping" sensitive electronics.  Because the power grid has long distribution cables going everywhere, there are many areas that cause concern but there are also solutions that are being implemented.  I don't believe the solar activity will take down a panel, unless there is a very long wire run going to it.  Others can correct/clarify..

TomW

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #2 on: August 30, 2010, 10:29:21 AM »
A sufficiently large and intense EMP would fry all semiconductors, including solar panels, diodes and most modern gizmos.

Not sure if solar flares generate EMP or not to be honest.

Hopefully the planetary magnetic field will deflect most of it but nobody "knows".

Just my thoughts.

Tom

wilfor03

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #3 on: August 30, 2010, 10:44:59 AM »
yeah, they're talking possible magnetic poles doing 180's, totally knocking out the power grids, and all sorts of weird stuff. I just want to keep my freezer 'n reefer running so when I go hunting/fishing, I can keep what I get for awhile somewhat fresh while the rest of the idiots go whining to the Executive Branch, eh?

 ;D   :-\
Bill

Beaufort

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #4 on: August 30, 2010, 10:49:01 AM »
A sufficiently large and intense EMP would fry all semiconductors, including solar panels, diodes and most modern gizmos.


Coming to a home improvement store near you, Faraday cage wallpaper.

DanG

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #5 on: August 30, 2010, 11:33:53 AM »

DamonHD

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #6 on: August 30, 2010, 11:43:56 AM »
A sufficiently large and intense EMP would fry all semiconductors, including solar panels, diodes and most modern gizmos.


Coming to a home improvement store near you, Faraday cage wallpaper.

Seems to stop my solar panels working when I put the Faraday wallpaper over them....

Rgds

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Bruce S

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #7 on: August 30, 2010, 12:10:39 PM »
I would not worry too much about the "prediction"
Firstly; the SUN is on a current regular 11-year cycle, this one is a Solar Minus, so much fewer solar flares than the previous 11-year cycle.

Since the last Solar-Maximus cycle; SATs going up are much better at being radiation hardened. 
The 180 turn is coming; but not to arrive for the next 10,000 years then it generally lasts a 1,000 years and flips back over. So we should be good for know.

We're more likely to have an EMP sent from an unsavory country then one from good ole Sol taking us ALL out.
Have you son go up to NASA.gov and get the information from them Very good source of getting to the bottom of these questions.
By the time the solar flares makes it through the Magnetosphere it'll make pretty night lights, but your Solar panels should be OK.

No I'm not a rocket scientist, No I do not receive any kick-back from NASA, but I am on the planetary hunt panel  :).

Hope this helps to ease your fears.
Bruce S
 
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dnix71

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #8 on: August 30, 2010, 12:32:34 PM »
There was a book titled "One second after" about a sneek nuke attack on the US. Three high altitude EMP weapons pretty much ended civilization after the grid failed.

There were solar storms that wiped out telegraph communicationsin 1859 and 1921. Those wouldn't harm home solar, though. It takes long wires to act as an antenna to rectify the pulses.
Canada has long distrbution wires and is close to the pole, so they have more to worry about.

I've seen lightning at night switch on my BZ Controller for a moment, so I imagine a nuclear flash would make my panels put out a lot of power for a real short time and then something would fail forever.  A solar flare doesn't put out that kind of light or emf at the ground, though, so I'm safe from that.

joestue

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #9 on: August 30, 2010, 02:29:48 PM »
a solar flare is not an EMP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_flare
nor is it a CME
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronal_mass_ejection

this is a good summary of what happens.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_storm#Electric_grid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetically_induced_current

Unless your solar panels are located a kilometre away and you have an ac system with ground return you have nothing to worry about.

A high altitude air burst will fry just about everything, with fields of 5-50KV per meter.
it isn't affordable to shield against this, redundancy is cheaper.
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wooferhound

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #10 on: August 30, 2010, 05:51:25 PM »
talking about the "Giant" Solar Flares" that NASA has predicted for the year 2012-2013.

I keep up with space news very closely. I have not heard anything about these NASA predictions that you are talking about. It sounds like you are hearing bad news, where is this information coming from?

DanG

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #11 on: August 30, 2010, 06:02:47 PM »
There's been some doom & gloom media coverage for a while now on the next cycle being a busy one...

April 2009: http://www.examiner.com/exopolitics-in-seattle/2012-may-bring-the-perfect-storm-solar-flares-systems-collapse

June 2010 http://2012changesarenow.blogspot.com/2010/06/nasa-warns-solar-flares-from-huge-space.html

Etcetera, etcetera....

Bruce S

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #12 on: August 31, 2010, 09:05:09 AM »
I like NASA's web info on it.
Better pic's and info.
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/04jun_swef/

Without the advertisements  ;D and much better videos  8)

Cheers;
Bruce S
 
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wooferhound

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #13 on: August 31, 2010, 11:27:57 AM »
There are a couple of events that are going to happen in 2012-2014. One of them is the maximum of activity in this 11 year solar cycle, but this solar cycle has been very quiet and there is not anything in particular that suggests that it will flair up to any huge intensity in 2013.

The other event that will occur in December 2012 is that our solar system will cross the Galactic Plane. This basically means that in our orbit around the Milky Way galaxy, we will be crossing the equator (so to speak) of the galaxy from the Southern side to the Northern side. But this is a very slow process and has been happening for centuries so nothing exciting is expected to happen.

I'm sure there will be a day that the Earth gets hit by a strong Solar Flare and causes some problems, but not the global power outages and other doom that is predicted by the less knowledgeable bloggers that are writing that stuff. I still haven't seen an actual NASA page that is making these gloomy predictions.

BrianSmith

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #14 on: August 31, 2010, 08:07:33 PM »
Although I'm no expert, I would hazard a guess that if some big solar EMP hit, it would do no damage to any wind generators or solar panels.  Solar panels / solar cells are a lot different than the small feature silicon ICs that make your computer work, and should be basically immune to this type of surge due to the very large feature size.  Your dual pentium processor with 50 million transistors where your one big chunk of silicon is on a solar cell, not so much.  Cell phone most likely dead.  Your sophisticated charge controllers probably ok so long as the PIC inside it has a socket.... 

Whether we get hit with something that big is another matter.....Here's to hoping we don't because I don't know what the teenage daughter would do without her cell phone....yikes!


SparWeb

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #15 on: September 03, 2010, 04:29:45 PM »
Quote from: dnix71
There was a book titled "One second after" about a sneek nuke attack on the US. Three high altitude EMP weapons pretty much ended civilization after the grid failed.

 ::)

It would of course be the downfall of USA technology, but "civilization" would hardly be threatened...
(cheap shot!  I couldn't help it.)

CME's (coronal mass ejections) only threaten the largest and most vulnerable "antennas", like very long power transmission wires, and equipment in space.  We ground dwellers won't notice a thing.
No one believes the theory except the one who developed it. Everyone believes the experiment except the one who ran it.
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Ungrounded Lightning Rod

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #16 on: September 03, 2010, 06:02:00 PM »
a solar flare is not an EMP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_flare
nor is it a CME
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronal_mass_ejection

this is a good summary of what happens.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_storm#Electric_grid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetically_induced_current

Unless your solar panels are located a kilometre away and you have an ac system with ground return you have nothing to worry about.

On the other hand, if they're hundreds of km away you've got problems similar to those of the grid.  B-)

Think of the solar flare as compressing the Earth's field, so that there's a slow (fractional cycle per second), mainly vertical, movement of the lines of force at ground level.  This induces a voltage in any wire it "cuts".  The field is pretty weak and moving pretty slowly, so you're talking fractional volts per meter in your "one turn coil" consisting of the wire going out and the current coming back through the earth ground.

But it's moving in about the same way simultaneously on a continental scale.  So with very long wires the "one turn through a small moving field" adds up pretty much in proportion to the length of the wire.  With a few hundred miles of wire the voltage can get big enough to drive nontrivial current.  Not "slag down the wires" current.  But current comparable to the normal currents in a transmission line, added to them.

The problem for the power grid occurs because, when this low frequency ("pseudo-DC" at the frequency scale of the power line) current is added to the current from the power, the current at one peak may be enough to saturate the core of the transformer.  At that point virtually all of the inductance "goes away" and you get a current spike on the input side and a voltage droop on the output side during the peak.  Harmonics, reactive currents, and all sorts of AC transmission-line pathology follows.

If the pathologies get the generators too far out of sync they start throwing large reactive currents at each other, breakers start popping (assuming the induced pseudo-DC or the current spikes didn't set 'em off already) to protect the generators, and the grid's load starts being concentrated on the generators that are still hooked up.  Then those try their damnedest to supply the load and THEIR breakers go, in a cascade.  Once you have more load than generation the cascade will go to completion even in the absence of currents from generator phase offsets (unless some "smart grid" stuff figures out the problem in time to start dumping city-sized loads from the grid faster than it's losing generation).  This terminates with the bulk of the grid or a major section of it powered down, maybe with a few islands around generators that lost most of their load rather than popping their individual breakers.  Then it's hours to days of work to get things back up even if nothing was damaged.  However if a lot of coils in transformers and/or generators got fried it could take months to get some stuff back up.

If you've only got a few hundred feet of cable - or even tens of miles of it - or you don't have a transformer-based AC system running on it even if it is that long (hooked up in Y with the center of the Y grounded at both ends), you should be fine.

EMP from high-altitude nuclear blasts is similar (though caused by different mechanisms) - but the field moves a LOT faster and you're talking tens or hundreds of volts, rather than fractions of volts, per meter of wire.  THAT could pop your electronics even with around-the-yard wiring, with a nasty spark coming in on your phone and power utility wiring as well.

dnix71

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #17 on: September 03, 2010, 09:05:02 PM »
SparWeb, if satellites failed there would be chaos in many places. Cell phones would fail, GPS would fail, no grid = no food after a while. A lot of international commerce would not be possible without satellite navigation. How many commercial ship captains can navigate by the stars anymore? Truckers in the US would have a party since their bosses wouldn't know where they are anymore.

The militaries of many countries would be blind. That would lead to chaos real quick. Anyone with old-school inertial guidance systems would suddenly become a threat.

The grid here is pretty fragile. One careless worker at a substation in Miami brought down 1/3 of the state because of the interconnectness of things.
http://truthmonk.wordpress.com/2008/03/01/florida-blackout-february-26-2008/  6 million people out of power because of a single substation failure. Turkey Point NP shut down with it.

wooferhound

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #18 on: September 04, 2010, 12:15:26 AM »
One Fourth of the city of Huntsville was cut off  for 2 days because a squirrel got into the substation and shorted out something and blew out a very large transformer. That was a couple of years ago.

joestue

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #19 on: September 05, 2010, 10:08:35 AM »
Quote
EMP from high-altitude nuclear blasts is similar (though caused by different mechanisms) - but the field moves a LOT faster and you're talking tens or hundreds of volts, rather than fractions of volts, per meter of wire.  THAT could pop your electronics even with around-the-yard wiring, with a nasty spark coming in on your phone and power utility wiring as well.

Its not even close to the same. the sun might get you a few volts per kilometer.
A nuclear air burst will burn out a 1950's street lamp half way across the globe...
You're looking at 0-60Kv/m.


Next topic.. watch the utilities wait for the federal government to pay them to put in the resistors from neutral to ground, and let the neutral float. in most cases, a few megawatts of resistors for each gigawatt of substation is all that is needed to keep the electricity flowing, if the voltage from neutral to ground gets too high then you pull the plug.
Although the big one hasn't hit yet, there have been transformer failures due to increased losses caused by normal background v/km
There isn't a lot of information on that, other than a few ieee papers and speculation.
Ironically the biggest, most efficient and expensive transformers are also the most sensitive.
Here's the kicker, the utilities already monitor the oil temp in real time, and route power around hot spots to maximize transformer lifetime.. they are rather good at making sure the $$ flow the right way, but anything on a 50 year time scale is someone else's problem
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12AX7

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #20 on: September 05, 2010, 04:09:24 PM »
Hello

Most people don't like hearing about this stuff but this place is an exception!   

I've a nephew that works at the local power plant (small coal fired). 
Years ago he suggested buying a back up generator.  He said that they didn't stock some of the larger transformers and rely on other near by utitilies for replacements.
That was many years ago.  He now works in purchasing, and says that the problems with stocking expensive parts is worse than ever.  He mentioned that under normal conditions they can get most common parts/transformers fairly quickly, however if ever there comes a time when many companies have failures at the same time (or in a short 'order/delivery) span that many could be sitting in the dark for a long time.  When pressed "how long is long?".....   he says  "it won't seem all that long if you have back-up power".

Krap!   this reminds me that I need to replace the low oil shut down on my Generic!

ax7
Mark

Ungrounded Lightning Rod

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #21 on: September 06, 2010, 02:43:14 AM »
Quote
EMP from high-altitude nuclear blasts is similar (though caused by different mechanisms) - but the field moves a LOT faster and you're talking tens or hundreds of volts, rather than fractions of volts, per meter of wire.  THAT could pop your electronics even with around-the-yard wiring, with a nasty spark coming in on your phone and power utility wiring as well.

Its not even close to the same. the sun might get you a few volts per kilometer.
A nuclear air burst will burn out a 1950's street lamp half way across the globe...
You're looking at 0-60Kv/m.

OK, nuclear EMP is nine orders of magnitude stronger than a bad magnetic storm, rather than seven, and I was low by two.  B-)

(As I recall an out-of-atmosphere nuclear EMP is much worse than an air burst, due to the expanding flash wavefront ionizing atoms as it encounters them and kicking the electrons aside - with the resulting current efficiently transforming a significant fraction of the wavefront energy into a synchronized EMP.)

fabricator

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #22 on: September 13, 2010, 09:18:33 PM »
Well, we can always hope it happens in mid summer when the sun is on the exact opposite side of the planet of the center of the CONUS, I'm glad my 15kw diesel generator aint got no chips in it, and I always have around 1000 gallons of bio diesel on hand, with another 2-3000 gallons of oil feedstock, I might have to buy me some concertina and claymores, solar flares don't cause zombies do they?
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DamonHD

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #23 on: September 14, 2010, 02:15:57 AM »
Depends what news channel they watch, I hear...

Rgds

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fabricator

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #24 on: September 14, 2010, 04:54:12 PM »
Well, if there were even an outside chance of there being any connection between this sun stuff and zombies it would be perfectly understandable to see people charging madly off in multiple directions.
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wilfor03

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #25 on: September 14, 2010, 05:34:59 PM »
They are.....they're called "Politicians".....LOL
Bill

zander1976

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #26 on: September 15, 2010, 12:20:29 AM »
When I worked at the telephone company every time their was a solar flare we would need to be at work. I managed a large server room with lots od equipment. The new equipment handled it just fine while the older stuff fried. These were relatively small, so if it's going to be huge one then yes it will be a problem. I don't recall them having issues with the battery stacks downstairs. It just mostly fried our 2400 baud modems :).



zander1976

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #27 on: September 15, 2010, 02:32:28 AM »
Hello,

I meant to mention that there has been tons of so called predictions that state the world is going to come to an end in 2012. People say that Nostradamus predicted the end of the world 2012. The commit that was going to hit the earth. NASA confirmed it will be close but based on their photos from 10 years before they say it will pass close. The Aztec calender ( i believe ) comes to an end in 2012. The funny part of all of this is that when is 2012. If you take a close look at the bible and compare it to historical events then you will find that year 1 Anno Domini is about 5 years off. Jesus was 5 or -5 when year 1 A.D i forget what direction. Their is a book from a minister named Lui Outhouse regarding the real timeline.

In the previous post I should mention that we needed to be at work during EMP, not solar flares. We had teams of people doing nothing but monitoring everything all over the world. Seemed over the top but I certainly wouldn't worry about the power grid collapsing. If that was a major concern they would already have the equipment shielded. They have stock holders to keep happy so they might not care if you loose power but they do care about their money. You can always believe in the power company protecting its stock holders :)

EMP, like all other radio waves, is easily stopped by something called a "fareaday cage".A.K.A. A fully enclosed box covered with a metal mesh(brass,copper, etc.) that is grounded. (quoted from a some random website :) )


« Last Edit: September 15, 2010, 02:43:26 AM by zander1976 »

richhagen

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #28 on: September 17, 2010, 12:29:20 AM »
I would think that an EMP would be somewhat difficult to shield against.  I would guess that our solar panels, which are essentially diodes, would be fried by anything remotely close. 

I wrote a report in the late nineties regarding an Electric Utility worker that got flash burns opening a utility transformer.  The worker was injured and power was knocked out to a section of Chicago because a rat had gotten in and killed himself shorting something out.  Just something that can happen. 

From what I have read on it, I would not expect anything from solar flares to be capable of taking out standard solar panels.  It is just not a strong enough field to make large enough voltage in anything we are likely to run in our home systems. 

Keep having fun, Rich 
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fabricator

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #29 on: September 17, 2010, 03:37:19 PM »
EMP from a nuclear explosion is line of sight, it would take multiple high altitude nukes to fry the entire CONUS, and then there would always be spots that because of peculiarities in terrain and atmosphere would be untouched.
As opposed to the mind boggling size of solar flares or CMEs which could blanket the entire day side of the planet if not the entire globe depending upon the size an longevity of the flare or CME.
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benami

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #30 on: November 06, 2010, 10:52:28 PM »
There are a couple of events that are going to happen in 2012-2014. One of them is the maximum of activity in this 11 year solar cycle, but this solar cycle has been very quiet and there is not anything in particular that suggests that it will flair up to any huge intensity in 2013.

The other event that will occur in December 2012 is that our solar system will cross the Galactic Plane. This basically means that in our orbit around the Milky Way galaxy, we will be crossing the equator (so to speak) of the galaxy from the Southern side to the Northern side. But this is a very slow process and has been happening for centuries so nothing exciting is expected to happen.

I'm sure there will be a day that the Earth gets hit by a strong Solar Flare and causes some problems, but not the global power outages and other doom that is predicted by the less knowledgeable bloggers that are writing that stuff. I still haven't seen an actual NASA page that is making these gloomy predictions.

NASA also does not share the opinion that our solar system will be crossing the galactic plane anytime soon.  Our solar system is several lightyears north of the plane and heading further north.....expected to reverse course in about 15 million years or so :P

Madscientist267

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #31 on: November 10, 2010, 12:38:41 PM »
Ok I just had to chime in on this...

Sounds to me like there's a wholotta speculation about what the impacts/risks/damages would be from both EMP and Solar flares/coronal discharges. Too many people misinterpreting too many variables, crossing concepts with incorrect associations, etc etc.

Things like rats crawling into transformers, EMP discharges, and solar flares are apples, turnips, and chives. They have so little in common in terms of cause/effect that they don't even belong in the same chapter of a book, nevermind sentence. Do they all have an effect on electrical/electronic equipment? Yes. To varying degrees. Do they have comparable effects? Only about as comparable as apples, turnips, and chives. They're all biological organisms. Hardly puts them all in the same class, now does it?

When you turn off a single light bulb in your house (assuming you're on grid), somewhere, a regulator compensates for this. Is it measurable? Not really, but anybody using RE can vouch for the concept since it's much more noticeable when smaller production facilities are in use. Moral of the story? Everything has an impact, but it's important to understand the susceptibility of the equipment in question, as well as not trying to apply concepts that are not even factors.

I personally am not going to worry about any of this stuff; no faraday cage wallpaper, no uber-grounding, none of that. As someone pointed out (don't exactly remember who), if its a big enough problem to affect the grid, the (forgive me here) measly RE systems won't do squat to keep us alive because everything and everyone "else" runs on the grid.

If the grid goes down due to a cascade, it is 'rebootable', and although it may take a while to bring it back online, the RE has nothing to do with the grid (even if you're tied; you'd overload-disconnect as soon as it went down).

Only the people that can (and do) literally COMPLETELY sustain their needs for months or even years on end with no 'ties' to the outside world would be able to thrive if something of catastrophic consequences were to take out the grid.

And no, shy of a true EMP (ie nuke), it's highly unlikely that the phenomena will be potent enough to take down individual RE systems.

Besides, if a nuke hits, are you really going to care whether you can still turn your lights on or not? Let the cockroaches figure THAT out... LOL

mv rant /dev/null

Steve

The size of the project matters not.
How much magic smoke it contains does !

DamonHD

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Re: Solar EMP and Solar Panels
« Reply #32 on: November 10, 2010, 02:12:25 PM »
I looked up the solar-flare induced voltages and it's of the order of mV/m (compared to the kV/m of EMP), so none of us running home-brew RE is likely to be affected in any way.

I might still put some MOVs in strategic places for the hell of it, but it's unlikely to make a huge difference for anything other than lightning hitting nearby (which doesn't happen here either).

Rgds

Damon
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