Disaster Preparedness

Eberhard said:

its never to late - the better is the killer to the good once. but you have 3-phase in america as well - and JB Straubel told me he will provide 3-phase for europe - why not for north-america as an option

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In North America, 3-phase is common in industrial buildings but almost unheard of in residential areas. That rather limits the number of people who could use it.

dpeilow said:

Please... not another 3 phase thread.

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It's going through a 3 thread phase. :biggrin:

vfx said:

Can a solar flare her my charging car?

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Solar flares don't generally have any direct effect on the surface of the Earth. Satellites in orbit can be affected, as they are outside our protective magnetosphere and atmosphere.

What does have an impact on Earth is a Coronal Mass Ejection. These are sometimes associated with solar flares, but they are really a separate phenomenon that, like a flare, tend to be triggered by an active region on the surface of the sun. A huge mass of charged particles is expelled from the corona (outer sun's "atmosphere") and travel away from the sun. They usually take several days to reach Earth, although occasionally it's faster than that. So there is advanced warning from spacecraft such as SOHO.

CME's happen all the time, but they aren't usually pointed right at us (or more accurately where the Earth will be a few days later). Even if we do get hit by one, if the associated magnetic field is in the same direction as Earth's, then nothing much happens. But if it's the opposite polarity it can weaken our "shields" and we get an auroral substorm. Under these conditions, huge electric fields are set up in the Earth's atmosphere, and this can cause large DC potentials across long distance power lines.

If the potential is large enough, it saturates the power transformers that raise the voltage for transmission. This causes huge overheating and can even in worst case conditions cause the transformers to explode. Usually it just trips out the breakers.

That's how the March 1989 Hydro Quebec blackout happened. That night I got the best aurora photos ever, but our neighbouring province spent the night in the dark. (There is a warning system in place for the power utilities, but notice arrived at Ontario Hydro, who distributes it to the other Canadian power companies, just as the day shift was leaving for the weekend, and some idiot threw it in his inbox and left. What's really stupid is that the facility is staffed 24/7.)

Auroral substorms also cause the outer atmosphere to warm up and expand, which alters the orbits of low-earth orbit satellites. It also messes up radio transmission. These effects can cause big problems with navigation systems such as GPS.

So... the upshot... if the sun goes ape you might lose power, and you won't be able to charge your car.

The thing about these events is they tend to affect extremely large conducting objects like power lines. Maybe if there is some kind of super mega flare it will impact electronic system on Earth, but it's still rather more likely to affect long distance power lines. These days terrestrial data is sent over fiber optic and microwave relays, which are much less susceptible.