Predicting space weather to protect the grid

Solar storms and the ensuing space weather can cause power system surges but predicting such events remains challenging due to their complexity and scale.

But that should be about to change with a new research programme getting under way at Northumbria University with £520,000 (US$0.6 million) support from Britain’s Natural Environment Research Council.

The five-year project led by physicist Andy Smith aims to analyse data from satellites and space missions over the last 20 years to gain a better understanding of the conditions under which storms are likely to occur.

The research team will then develop artificial intelligence based computer models which will use the data gathered to predict when such storms could occur in future, forecasting phenomena such as the northern lights, or aurora, and enabling the delivery of alerts and the implementation of grid protection plans.

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“One of the primary ways in which space weather can impact society is through an unexpected surge of energy in power networks and pipelines on the ground,” says Smith.

“It’s not a case of if the Earth will be hit by a serious space weather event, it’s a case of when – and this physics-inspired artificial intelligence system will allow us to predict such an event and protect ourselves from it.”

Such surges, known as ‘geomagnetically induced currents’ are driven by rapid changes in the Earth’s magnetic field and can accelerate the ageing of systems or more critically lead to the failure of components such as power transformers.

A range of phenomena are responsible, but one of the most important is an instability in the magnetosphere, resulting from interactions between the magnetic field of the Earth and the incident solar wind following an eruption, or ‘coronal mass ejection’, from the Sun, in which plasma is ejected towards the Earth at supersonic speeds.

The additional energy that results is stored until the point of stability is reached, when it is explosively released, giving rise to observable phenomena such as the aurora.

Such events have been observed in history, with the most intense geomagnetic storm ever recorded, the so-called 1859 Carrington event, resulting in strong auroral displays visible around the world as well as fires in multiple telegraph stations.

Richard Carrington, after whom it is named, was a British amateur astronomer who along with another observer Richard Hodgson independently observed the solar flare connected with the event.

With the next solar maximum approaching around July 2025, an increase in solar storms is expected over the next two to three years. An event on a similar scale to the Carrington event could have significant consequences not only for the power grid but also for other infrastructure such as communications, both satellite and Earth-based.

A key feature of the study is to improve understanding of the processes and instabilities in the magnetosphere, from which the forecasting models can be developed, with the aim to provide precise and reliable predictions of when regions are at risk of dangerous geomagnetically induced currents.