Photo: Bill Hrybyk/Goddard/NASA
Not all threats to the electric grid originate here on Earth. To better
understand large solar events, which can be dangerous to the
transmission grid, a researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center is
using high-voltage transmission lines to map large-scale
geomagnetically-induced currents (GICs).
GICs occur when the sun ejects huge bubbles of charged particles that
can carry up to 10 billion tons of matter. When the bubbles strike the
Earth’s atmosphere, the geomagnetic field that surrounds our planet
fluctuates.
These fluctuations in the electrical current can then flow through any
large conductive structure such as power lines, oil and gas pipelines,
undersea cables, and railways, according to NASA. When excess current
flows through the electric transmission system, it can overload
transformers and collapse the system, leading to large-scale outages.
From 1960 to 2000, the high voltage grid in the United States has grown
nearly tenfold, according Oak Ridge National Laboratory [PDF], making it increasingly susceptible to GICs.
The concern that a large GIC could plunge part of the United States
into a blackout is high on the list of issues faced by the Federal
Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), and is as much of a focus as
physical or cyber security threats.
Last year, FERC ordered the North American Reliability Corporation
to propose reliability standards for the grid that address the impact
of geomagnetic disturbances; owners of the bulk-power grid will have to
conduct assessments of the potential impact of GICs on their systems
moving forward.
To better understand the effects of GICs, Antti Pulkkinen, a
heliophysicst at Goddard, is installing three substations beneath
high-voltage transmission lines to measure GICs.
“This is the first time we have used the U.S. high-voltage power
transmission system as a science tool to map large-scale GICs,”
Pulkkinen said in the NASA publication Cutting Edge [PDF]. “This application will allow unprecedented, game-changing data gathering over a wide range of spatial and temporal scales.”
Two of the three substations being built by Goddard engineers will be
buried 1.2 meters below ground at a spot where Dominion Virginia Power’s
high-voltage lines pass overhead. The lines will act as antennae for
the electrical current. The substations will contain commercially
available magnetometers that can make precise measurements of GICs. (The
third substation will be located about three kilometers away to provide
reference measurements.)
Pulkkinen’s team is using technology also developed at Goddard to
command and control the magnetometers from an iPad. The application,
which tags and geolocates data, will send it to a server once every
second.
The pilot project is expected to last one to two years, but Pulkkinen
hopes to eventually deploy hundreds of substations with long-term
funding from multiple government agencies. The current project is funded
by NASA’s Center Innovation Fund and Goddard International Research and
Development program.
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