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Persistent URL http://purl.org/net/epubs/work/41018576
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Record Id 41018576
Title Simple scenarios for simulating severe space weather impacts on power grids
Contributors
Abstract The future management of severe space weather risks requires that we assess how the economic impact of space weather can be reduced by provision of services such as nowcasting and forecasting. This is a vital step in securing investment in such services, i.e. is spending X pounds likely to reduce the economic impact by >nX pounds, where n is a factor that convinces the investor? To make such assessments we need to couple models of severe space weather environments to disruption of key infrastructures and thence to the economic consequences of that disruption. This poster outlines a simple model to address the first step in this chain as it applies to impacts on electric power grids. We have focused on the risk from substorm impacts on power grids, as happened in Canada and in the UK during the March 1989 superstorm. We use the auroral electrojet (AE) index as the basis to construct a time series of substorms of differing intensities, with the impact on any power grid depending on the local time when the substorm occurs, and an assessment of whether the grid has high or low resilience to geomagnetically induced currents. We use historical data to construct scenarios for risks at probabilities of 1-in-10 years (based on the 2003 storm), 1-in-30 years (based on the 1989 storm), and 1-in-100 years (scaling up the 1989 storm to match published data on the double storm of 1859). We also explore how the impact of these scenarios on any particular location (such as the UK) will vary as storm start time varies with Universal Time. This last step highlights how the risk escalates as we move to the 1-in-100 year scenario.
Organisation STFC , RALSP
Keywords geomagnetically induced currents , space weather , Carrington event , extreme events , geomagnetic storms , scenarios , severe events
Funding Information NERC (NE/P016863/1)
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Language English (EN)
Type Details URI(s) Local file(s) Year
Presentation Presented at Ground Effects of Severe Space Weather events, London, England, 9 Mar 2018 - 19 Feb 2019. ras-20180309-mah-v5.pdf 2018