A recent story on wired shows us a particularly terrifying reason why we should look into making our own electricity at home: coronal mass ejections (CMEs).
What is a CME?
They start with a nightclub analogy to explain that a lot happens in the sun. If everything inside moves, it could take 100,000 years or more for a single photon to travel from the nucleus, where they are formed by fusion reactions, to the edge of the sun, where it can go out into space. There’s just so much going on in the sun that it takes people forever to get through the crowd.
But leaving the club and going into the cool, crisp night in space isn’t always a very orderly process. Sometimes you walk out alone and everything is fine. Other times there is a rush for the exits, and a lot of energy pushes out a “door” at once. When it comes to sunshine, a place with no clubs and no nights, the cause of commotion is not so much crowds as confused magnetic fields. If things get messed up enough, a bunch of charged particles could all come screaming out of the sun.
Usually, when this gun-like explosion goes off, the sun’s third rock we call home doesn’t get in the way. People who study the sun will see the commotion, but no one else really notices. But if it’s aimed at Earth, it can go bad quickly.
If we’re lucky, the magnetic storm’s polarity is the same as our planet’s electromagnetic field. In that case, the particles fly harmlessly into space while the natural force field of our planet pushes them away. But when the polarities are opposite, the particles are drawn like one magnet to another and strike the planet.
What happens if the Earth is hit?
We have experienced this a number of times on planet Earth.
The most famous example is in 1859, with what is called the Carrington Event. I wrote about this on CleanTechnica rather, but I’ll summarize it here. The storm was so violent that aurora borealis could not be seen just as usual near the poles. People as far as the equator could see the sky light up at night. People in the city could read newspapers by the light of the storm, while people working in mines in the American West got up and started cooking breakfast, thinking the sun was about to rise (and probably set itself). wondering why they were so tired).
The beauty and confusion wasn’t all that telegraph operators experienced. The long, long wires going from the telegraph station to the telegraph station were long enough to accommodate the energy from the solar storm. Some telegraph operators were shocked by the incoming power on a wire believed to be dead. Others could continue to send and receive messages without plugging in their equipment because the lines had had enough and then some. There were also a few fires caused by errant electricity in the wires.
No one has died as far as we know, but the world has changed a lot since 1859. As weaker storms came in subsequent years, they wreaked havoc on power grids, another invention that uses long, long wires. Sometimes the energy comes from the earth, attracted to these long wires, but in the process can burn out expensive and hard-to-find current transformers. Anything else connected to the grid can be baked.
In some ways, this kind of electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, isn’t as bad as they make out in Hollywood and in books. When there’s that kind of energy in the air, whether it’s bad space weather or man-made causes like a high-altitude nuclear explosion, the TV would have you believe that nothing electronic survives. The truth is that most things would survive but would not have an electrical grid to power them. For example, 90% of cars would still be running and most of the remaining 10% could be repaired by disconnecting their batteries for a while, but where will gas-powered vehicles without power get their fuel?
The problem is that this could take months and possibly years. When expensive and difficult to replace transformers are fried, under normal circumstances they will take months or years to be replaced. With everyone who needs them at once? That will be an even longer delay. Much of a country would be without power until things are fixed.
There are solutions, but electric companies are behind the ball. With only a few hours of warning at worst or days of warning at best, unplugging everything to keep it from breaking would be a monumental task. Instead, we should be doing what Quebec’s electric utilities did after a nasty solar storm: add capacitors to the transformers. Capacitors not only equalize peaks, but they also block the direct current (DC) that would come out of such an event.
But it seems unlikely that utilities (especially in the United States) will add this essential equipment to the power grid.
What can I do to protect my family?
There are several approaches, and they will vary depending on your budget and whether you own your home.
If you don’t have a lot of money and/or don’t own a house, you want to keep your solution cheap and portable. We reviewed a variety of solar generators, or kits that include solar panels, batteries, and inverters that are all set up to power normal electronics using the power of the sun. These can be as cheap as $200-300, but they can’t do much more than charge cell phones and computers. Or they can cost several thousand dollars and power almost anything. These can be found at prices to suit most budgets.
The most extreme kit I’ve tested is Jackery’s Explorer 2000 Pro with six portable 200-watt Solar Saga panels. It’s not cheap, but it could power many household appliances and even help you cook food without fuel (there’s no link to my review right now as the review is in progress). Not only can it run any household appliance that runs on 120 volts, but it can also add a few miles of range to an EV if needed in an emergency.
I’ve found that even with 200 watts of solar panels and a relatively small battery, it’s possible to use a portable refrigerator to keep not only food, but essential medicines cold. You’d have to get meds, which requires money and/or consistent early refills, but even diabetics can survive during extended power outages.
If you own your own home and can get it financed or have money to spend, consider purchasing a hardened solar and storage system. The wires going from panels to your inverter must be shielded and grounded and the inverter itself must be EMP resistant, but those two things allow a system to survive a solar storm or other EMP event and continue to provide a family with power. . You should talk to a professional about these options and don’t let them stop you from getting the right parts.
Whatever you do, try not to rely on a gas or diesel generator for these types of emergencies. No one can reasonably store enough fuel or be sure that a generator will run for months.
In some ways, electrical power would be one of your minor concerns in such a scenario, but things like food storage, water supply, and defense are beyond the scope of this. CleanTechnica† You should try to make a reasonable plan for your family for each of these things.
Featured image by NASA (Public Domain).
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