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• Archived Blog Post

  Date / Time: 4/22/2009 8:23 PM UTC

  Are We Ready for a Solar Katrina?
  

  Restoring Power Grid Could Take More Than 12 Months

  In well-documented cases involving heat failures in the transformers that undergird the power system, he said it has taken 12 months or more to replace the damaged units with new ones.

  According to the NAS report, "Collateral effects of a longer-term outage would likely include, for example, disruption of the transportation, communication, banking, and finance systems, and government services; the breakdown of the distribution of potable water owing to pump failure; and the loss of perishable foods and medications because of lack of refrigeration."

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  The loss of services, it said, would spill over from one region of the country to the entire nation and potentially lead to international implications.

  The price tag of such a calamity? Several trillion dollars per year, the report said.

  Worst-Case Scenario Is Unlikely

  But scientists emphasize that this situation is improble.

  Michael Kaiser, project scientist for NASA's Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) mission, told ABCNews.com that he doesn't think it's likely that a doomsday situation will unfold.

  Even though he acknowledged the devastation previous storms had caused, he said that were storms of equal magnitude to hit now, power grid operators could adjust the system to mitigate harm if they had enough notice.

  "People who run the power grids on the ground could probably lower the amount of power they're carrying," he said.

  He also said that given how quiet the sun has been recently, he doesn't expect a powerful solar storm anytime soon.

  The sun's activity waxes and wanes in an 11-year cycle. Right now, he said, the sun is experiencing the deepest minimum in about a century.

  But, he said, in the next few years, as the sun approaches the peak of its cycle, the possibility for interference increases, especially considering we have launched more spacecraft and rely more heavily on technology.

  He emphasized that the airlines, the oil and gas industry, agriculture companies and others are dependent on technology that is vulnerable to the sun's volatility.

  For example, he said, highway companies, agro-business and deep sea drilling rigs rely on precision GPS technology. Solar interference could knock them off about 100 yards, and even that could have a negative effect on their operations.
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