The Grid vs. The Next Big Solar Storm 

Off the back of the success of the graph paper notebook, Shopify have kindly come in to sponsor the channel. That was all you guys! Thank you. Go to www.shopify.com/realengineering for a 14 day free trial. No credit card details required!

The answer to "Should we fear" is always no, but we should be prepared yes

3:05 that is not how it's supposed to spin The magnetic flux through the coil isn't changing

You've seriously undersold just how powerful solar flares / coronal mass ejections can be in rare cases. They are ranked on a scale, and although X-class flares are not common, they are incredibly powerful. It's highly likely (pretty much inevitable) that the Earth will be in the line of sight for a major ejection at some point, and our preparedness for a geomagnetic storm of extreme magnitude is virtually zero. I agree in general that for average solar storms, we're fine, but it's one of those "it's not if, but when" situations when it comes to a major event affecting life on Earth.

"Aurora Borealis?! At this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the world?!" -People in the Caribbean

I watch the Sun with my telescope and this pops up.

This is very interesting stuff! I work as a grid operator, and maybe once a year we have these sudden circut breaker trips on our transformers related to solar flares. Sometimes in such an extent we now have a direct line to meteorologists so we can recieve early warning in case of this.

As an Electrical Engineer, I understand every single word you said. You make great efforts in explaining engineering to the mass! Keep it up mate! Engineers are the most important people in this world who risk our lives to make other peoples lives better! You make us engineers proud! Thank you!

Me: This is an interesting subject for a video Me, remembering I have a pacemaker: Oh dios mio

Pretty spot on. The main thing in Quebec is the GMD caused transformer saturation, which introduced a lot of harmonics on the system from the bad sine wave, which shorted through the capacitors as high frequency harmonics do, which caused their protective relaying to trip the capacitors as they were detecting over current, which caused the system voltage to collapse as it was being held up by a large amount of capacitors/SVCs. I think maybe one thing that would help this video would be a diagram showing the DC current flow from ground to xfmr ground to xfmr high voltage winding to transmission line and then the reverse on the other end.

THE SUN IS A DEADLY LAZER

I was in the Florida Keys in 89. Watching the Aurora Borealis while you're sitting on a warm beach at night was so surreal.

anyone else just mesmerized and fascinated with how beautiful the sun looks when pictured through these instruments??

Just use an uno reverse card on the solar flares

Hardening the grid and our electronics reduces our vulnerability to an EMP strike as well. That and intense solar storms are examples of things that are unlikely, but highly damaging if they do happen, and it makes sense for us to prepare against them.

You neglect to mention Earth's magnetic field weakening thus geomagnetic storms having a more profound devastating effect if the conditions are correct

"Weiss: An assessment of threats to the American power grid. " I could dump a ton of references on you but really this one is all you need as it does a fantastic job of collating a lot of information (with sources!) in a short paper.

12:00 the bromance with wendover productions continues.

You didn't mention things like wireless telecommunication, pacemakers, etc.

As somebody that works in the electrical industry, you shouldn't underestimate the dangers of a massive solar storm hitting our grid. It is a genuine fear and does have the capability to cause phenominal damage. Granted, there are ways to mitigate that damage through software, like you mentioned, but if the storm is large enough, such as the one mentioned in 1895, there's nothing we can do to stop the resulting catastrophe without some major changes to the electrical grid. When a substation transformer explodes, you've just lost a piece of essentially bespoke equipment worth thousands of dollars These aren't the tin cans you have attached to the pole by your house, these things are the size of cars. The biggest fear right now is that if enough of these transformers go up in smoke as a result of a powerful solar flare, it could take months to years to replace them all. Such events that could cause this kind of damage are extremely rare, but if it happened once, it can certainly happen again, and that's what we're afraid of.

2020: Write that down, write that down!

Another point worth noting, the Carrington event occurred while earths magnetic field strength was optimal, but in the last 100 years it's been weakening at an increasing rate (about 5% per decade now) and appears to be heading toward a magnetic reversal that could take decades or even centuries to complete the flip. If a Carrington event happened during this time you can expect the geomagnetic effects to be much worse, maybe exponentially. As well as direct issues of dangerous cancer causing radiation, I imagine you would want to go underground for a few days in such an event if our magnetic field is weak at the same time. Also, wouldn't the danger from a solar storm be just as much the damage to computer systems as it would be transformers? If half the worlds computers or more were fried it would shut everything down for months and have lasting effects for possibly years or decades, we've seen the chaos from a city losing power for a couple days or weeks, imagine entire countries losing power for months.

I heard of your channel first when you done the collab with Alec Steele & I've been watching ever since. I've actually went back to college to become a Mechanical Engineer & I've told other students & lecturers about your channel & they all love it too. Keep up the great work.

Damn that ad transition was smooth af lmao

So many people have no idea whatsoever of the value and importance of this information and that is very sad. Thank you so much for your time and information. Peace and love.

Build a global faraday cage... Hmmm my GPS stopped working:(

What an amazing video! I loved how you were subtly teaching us about electricity while keeping a main story to keep us intrigued. Absolutely golden.

Would have been interested to hear about the impact solar storm can have on satellites (geostationary and LEO). Like reducing the lifespan, possible critical failure, and the way satellites are designed to mitigate that risk. Maybe in another video? :P

I knew CME’S were destructive, but never thought about WHY... it isn’t the matter from the sun causing the chaos, it’s the impact on the earth’s magnetic field and the manipulation of the field causing movement of the field through our wires... wow. Thanks for explaining that better than any of the other fearmongering videos and documentaries I have seen on the subject! Informative in So many ways! I love this channel!

Should we fear the next solar storm? Sure, why not? We fear everything else.

00:02 Had to pause, look at it and THINK... What is this? NOT_Skillshare?

“Should we fear it” Ha jokes on you, I’m already afraid of everything

I was really wondering about this topic, thank you so much for making this video

@Real Engineering Could you make a video on the threat of a magnetic shift of Earths magnetic field? (I mean the cyclic shifts North to South and vice versa) Like your content a lot!

Suspicious 0bservers is the channel to watch for Space Weather. 🙏

Capacitors could be set up to gather the extra electricity like a battery from the solar storms and later re-inject that power back into our power distribution while absorbing the overcharge at the same time acting as a surge protector.

Best description and easiest to understand than all the others I have watched. Well done!

I strongly disagree with the conclusion of this video. I would encourage you to look into the work of professor Thomas Overbye at Texas A&M formerly of UIUC.

"Cost" seems to be a silly reason to take into account when it comes to keeping the electricity grid and systems that rely on it safe from something as potentially dangerous as a lethal solar storm

Super! Great to see someone else touching up on the topic. A subject ive been studying for many years. Truth is solar activity influences our blood pressure, seismic activity, climate plus so much more. More to this which meets the eyes. Made a brief video on it last year. Have a look hope you find it helpful. Anyway keep it up Stay safe All the best

Really great video, very informative and well explained. Thank you

In school my teacher pulled one of your videos up and i literacy screamed I know this channel lol

Most Importantly... STARLINK Project: **Exists** Solar Storm: *I AM INEVITABLE.*

very well produced and researched video. thank you for this

The fact that you know this much about so many different topics is mind blowing

3:00 uhhh it looks like the coil isn't rotating in the right axis

TIL the basic concept of how transformers step voltages up and down. So interesting

I am glad the video focussed on the 1989 Event in Quebec... and event that provided me a consulting assignment with Hydro Quebec... a few years later... My understanding of the problem is as follows (yes I lived in Montreal between 1974-81 too). • HydroQuebec gets most of its electricity from James Bay... way up north... with Montreal.. as its major load.... not too far from The US Border in the South... • The above results in large amounts of electricity being transmitted along the North-South Axis of the Earth. • This N-S Orientation of the multiple transmission lines made them ALL VULNERABLE TO the Geomagnetic Storm in 1989. • The DC Voltage induced by the Storm.. shifted the Neutral from its "natural zero" and as the Hysterisis Loop Diagram will show.. caused Saturation of ALL the Grid Tranformers... specially those on these N-S lines... • Due to "Saturation" of the Iron Cores, these Transformers heated up due to accompanying "higher iron losses" ... • The higher temperatures resulted in tripping of transformers as sensed by Temperature devices etc.. on them. • Once one transformer tripped... it's load got transferred to the (already hot) adjacent transformer... heating and tripping it too ... and initiated a "Cascade of Failures" and subsequent collapse of the Hydro Quebec Grid as there was not much generation in or around Montreal... to handle Quebec's main load center... • In addition, parts of the US near the US-Candian Border that are fed by (AC-DC-AC) Inter-Tie Inverter Stations also lost power.. just FYI... It is possible the relays could have "malfunctioned" but my understand is that it was the REAL OVERHEATING of multiple transformers and the "Cascade Effect" ... that doomed The N-S James Bay Transmission Network... in March 1989... Lesson learnt is..... WATCH OUT FOR N-S Transmission Lines in future planning and upgrades of Grids, specially near the Poles... and reduce loads and voltages on the grid and vulnerable transformers.... as fast as possible... to better handle the REAL "heating effects" of Geomagnetic Storms... due to Core Saturation...

The graph paper notebooks are very nice. Way nicer than what I’ve bought at office supply stores. Very high quality. I bought 4 and gave one to each of my two kids who I hope will follow me into engineering or some other STEM field. Anyway thanks for selling those.

2:35 the right animation is incorrect, using the rules of induction you see that there won't be any current or turning force generated in that configuration. Same for the coil in the magnets in the next animation

I feel your videos have increased in quality recently, nice work😄. Also with the pending polar switch I think solar wind id going to become more of a problem, especially for things like satellites which are hard to fix

As always, amazing video!!! Really appreciated buddy

The location labeled Quebec City on the night view of the earth at 2 minutes is off by over 700Km, I grew up and still live in Quebec :) I also wonder if there isn't a slight confusion between the province of Quebec ( then 6 millions habitant ) and Quebec City (currently half million) shown turning dark. The blackout affected almost the entire province.

I just learned about this today and was legitimately upset about it until I watched this, thank you

Canada: 9hrs without electricity and chaos. Puerto Rico after maria: *hold my beer for 5 months*

This is a great vid with great explanation of complex systems

Very simple and great explanation!

"Any prospective link that ends in a question is typically answered with a 'no'".

"The sun is the same in a relative way, but your older. Shorter of breath and one day closer to death." P. Floyd

Nice vid! Also cool to know Finland has invested on the power grid, since I live here. Solar storm in the coldest winter days could hurt if the grid goes, hah

Thanks for doing this topic. I actually feel much better now.

This is the most amazing and accurate video to ever handle this anomaly . You are amazing

Hey just wanted to say I really like the video. I’m impressed by your 3D graphic representations and the subtle sponsorship plug.

Good job integrating the commercial in your video. Clever.

Massive solar flare: Happens. Companies who replaced human workers for machines: Makes no money. Human workers: *Laughs in union*

If a CME causes a major Carrington event then we'll be too busy trying to _survive_ to worry about it.

Great video! Great work! 👏

Brilliant how you rolled right into a sales pitch 11:33 without missing a beat!

Me: *loves astronomy and engineering* *sees this video* *INSANELY FAST CLICKING INTENSIFIES*

I was using a magnifying lens to look at the Sol and this gets recommend.

Beautifully and clearly narrated!

Great work! And big up for the citation of your sources!

"The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself."

YES ALWAYS FEAR THE END IS NEAR

They are coming!! They are coming!!!

Thank you for sharing with us

Finally! Someone who explains why the real risk of Geomagnetic storms to the power grid is the reduction of a transformer's inductance by a DC current saturating the core. Every time I try to do this, eyes glaze over accompanied by blank stares. And yeah, sensors can detect this when it happens and trip safety cutouts. The hydro plant in Quebec should darn well have had a detector for the sudden loss of it's load and immediately shut down the generators' field currents in time to prevent damage. Betcha they have added this feature since. So, how many decades might it take for this part of the solar-storm risk story to reach the lame-stream media? Not taking bets on it for now. Great job! Thanks!

"The mainstream media's fearmongering on is completely overblown..."

I already knew about all this but I couldn't resist not listening to that beautiful Irish accent! Good stuff. Definitely worth watching.

You say fear. But at 2:17 all i hear is opportunity. Imagine the potential if we could harness and store that energy. (That just put the Dyson Sphere in to a clear perspective for me).

2:24 “as you probably know already, we generate electricity by moving a wire through a magnetic field” No.. I don’t know, I had no clue lmao this is all new to me lol

I've always figured that this was something we've found solutions for ever since I first heard about it. So I've always said "Come at me bro" to solar storms. Besides a good apocalypse would be helpful right about now.

Quite informative. Well done.

Y’all in the comments are forgetting one huge thing. Scheduled blackouts can reduce damage to power grids.

This video exhibits recency bias. Just because it hasn’t happened recently, doesn’t mean it can’t happen. The most recent massive solar event which occurred in 1859 would devastate our power grid if it happened today. Events of this magnitude occur every several hundred years. When (not if) a similar event happens again, there will be major consequences for our power grid.

Yeah but also all the electronics will be affected or fried, there's no solution to that

I like the little bit of shade you threw at Wendover lol

I liked this video.The pictures/videos were amazing.

This video taught me Suns' farts are way too powerful. More knowledge is always helpful.

Yeah as a Sun, You earthlings must be worried about my ejection

Smooth change to advertising spot! Awesome!

Thank you for this!

Big fail at 3:05

I'm a little traumatized after watching the movie Knowing.

3:19, the coil is drawn in the wrong direction for a generator, the magnetic field lines won't be broken as the core rotates.

I saw the movie "Threads" last year. Then I started studying the Sun. I've been hoarding supplies ever since. By the way the Solar Dynamics Observatory is available as a free app.

I thought it was an octopus in the thumbnail

Lmao just type in /gamerule doFireTick false in the chat

IIn March 1989, I had a HF station in New Guinea. The solar flare destroyed for about a day, ALL mf and HF comms, I couldn't even pick up LAE NDB, 10 miles away

Nice at the end. I'll check out Shopify or try to. Much thanks great job.