January 4, 2016 | By Barbara Vergetis Lundin

The New Year ushered in more than just celebrations and resolutions. New Year's Day saw a geomagnetic solar storm measuring G2, which can cause power grid fluctuations and voltage alarms on high-latitude power systems, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Credit: Digital Vision

Geomagnetic solar storms are measured on a scale of G1 to G5.

A severe geomagnetic solar storm could cause 130 million Americans to lose grid power for a year or more, according to a 2010 series of reports commissioned by the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies, and areas most affected would be the eastern United States from Maine to Washington, DC and the Pacific Northwest.

Electrical currents induced during solar storms can damage utility equipment, especially large transformers used for long-distance transmission. In March 1989, a solar storm blacked out the province of Quebec, Canada. During the same storm, wide-area blackouts in the United States were narrowly avoided. Utilities in northern latitudes reported more than 100 system impacts, including tripping off of major equipment.

In October 2015, President Obama's National Science and Technology Council released its National Space Weather Strategy and Action Plan, a series of government initiatives that would encourage government agencies and private industry to protect the electric grid and other critical infrastructure from geomagnetic solar storms. A key goal of the Action Plan is to "work with industry to achieve long-term reduction of vulnerability to space weather events by implementing measures at locations most susceptible to space weather."

While 85 percent of electricity is supplied by private companies, action could be immediately taken at major federally-owned utilities, according to the Foundation for Resilient Societies, a New Hampshire-based non-profit group that participated in the drafting of the National Space Weather Strategy through the public comment process.

"Electric utilities have failed to safeguard their most critical and hard-to-replace equipment from solar storms, despite the commercial availability of inexpensive protective devices," said Thomas Popik, chairman of Resilient Societies. "Quick installation of surge blockers at government-owned generation plants and grid substations could protect ratepayers from heavy financial losses if a severe solar storm hit the earth."

Electric utilities are not currently required to promptly report outages or other impacts caused by solar storms; however, the National Space Weather Strategy and Action Plan would encourage utilities to report the impact of solar storms in real time to regulatory authorities in the future.

The world is currently in the "Solar Maximum," a time of increased frequency of geomagnetic solar storms. During the Solar Maximum, storms of G2 intensity occur every few months.

"G2 storms are unlikely to cause power outages within the United States," Popik explained. "Nonetheless, because electric utilities have operating procedures (required by a North American Electric Reliability Corporation reliability standard, EOP-010-1 — Geomagnetic Disturbance Operations)

for solar storms and have installed over 100 Geomagnetically Induced Current (GIC) monitors, moderate solar storms are an excellent opportunity to test their procedures and gauge the probable impact of more severe storms."

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