Post by woodyz on Mar 20, 2016 13:45:45 GMT -7
The 100-Year Geomagnetic Storm and The Electric Grid – Part 1, by Tango Delta
An average of once every one hundred years the sun takes aim at earth and launches a ginormous coronal mass ejection(CME). Less than a day later, it arrives as a cloud of charged particles and hits the earth’s magnetic field. It has a southern polarity and, therefore, “couples” with the earth’s magnetosphere, creating swirling “electrojets” of charged particles 100km above the earth. These produce geomagnetically-induced currents (GIC) in the earth itself. These currents flow into the grounding mechanisms of large Extra High Voltage (EHV) transmission towers. The current then flows through the transmission lines and into the EHV transformers in the system. This quasi-DC current (in an AC system) produces “half cycle saturation” that overheats and permanently damages those $5-10 million boxcar-sized transformers. The current also produces harmonics that can damage or trick other components in the system, resulting in a collapse of the grid. The most important EHV transformers are the Generator Step Up (GSU) units located at nuclear or equally large coal generating plants. When these transformers fail, there is no way to get power from the plant to the grid. The icing on this cake is that it takes about a year to order, manufacture, and install a replacement EHV transformer (when the grid is up everywhere).
The Situation
In 2008 a leading geomagnetic storm researcher developed a model to simulate the effects of another 100-year storm on the modern electric grid. The study, “Severe Space Weather Events; Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts” done by Metatech, an electric industry consultant (working for the Congressional EMP Commission and FEMA, not the Sierra Club), predicted that in a geomagnetic storm equivalent to the 1921 “100-year storm” approximately 365 EHV transformers would fail. The grid could not compensate for that many failures, leading to collapse east of a line from Chicago to Memphis to Jacksonville, FL and in the Pacific Northwest. The estimate for full recovery is four to ten years at a cost of trillions of dollars. The above is not the worst case scenario. The modeled storm is centered over southern Canada. If it is farther south, the predicted damage is over 600 EHV transformers. The model only examines transformers down to 345kV. Many 230kV transformers will fail, too. Also, storms larger than the 100-year storm have struck us in the past.
This vulnerability was first documented with the 1989 Quebec Hydro storm. A moderate-sized storm took Quebec and part of the Northeast grid offline in 92 seconds, put six million people in the dark, and immediately damaged two EHV transformers in Quebec and one in the U.S. The two Quebec transformers were not damaged directly by the GIC but by “the uncontrolled operation of circuit breakers in rapid succession” causing overloads as the grid collapsed. [Kappenman, Meta-R-319 p.2-12, 2010.] Also noteworthy is that 11 nuclear power plant GSU transformers needed to be replaced over the next two years, indicating that even if GIC doesn’t immediately kill a transformer, it can greatly shorten its life. The cost of this storm has been estimated at $360-645 million [Tsurutani, et al, Journal of Geophysical Research, 3July2003 online]. In the “Halloween Storms” of Oct-Nov 2003, a series of storms destroyed 14 EHV transformers in South Africa [NERC, HILF, 2009]. These storms produced lower GICs, but they lasted for several days. The transformers failed over a period of 10 months following the storms, so there was no massive blackout during the storm. Instead, there were brownouts and rolling blackouts as transformers failed. This storm was also important because previously these latitudes from the magnetic poles (equivalent to southern California and Florida) were thought to be safe from damaging GICs.
Another important event occurred in 2003. A high voltage line touched a tree and precipitated a collapse of the grid from Ohio to New York City. This put 50 million people in the dark. It was important, since it showed that even 14 years after the 1989 storm we could not prevent cascading collapses of the grid. The minimum cost estimate for the blackout is $6 billion [CENTRA, 2011]. Later, we will see that blackouts cost much more than hardening the grid to prevent grid damage and collapses.
There have been other more powerful storms, but they pre-date a modern electrical grid. The 1921 “Railroad Storm” is named for the impacts to railroad signaling and switching devices, as well as the trans-Atlantic cable and telegraph systems. It has been estimated to have been ten times the intensity of the 1989 Quebec Hydro storm [Meta R-322 p. 7-5]. It is considered the “100-year” geomagnetic storm and is the basis of the Metatech modeling from 2008 and 2010.
The largest recorded geomagnetic storm was the “Carrington event”. The name is from the astronomer who was actually looking (indirectly) at the sun in 1859 when the CME erupted. Nitrates are produced in the atmosphere above the poles by geomagnetic storms and settle to the polar ice. Measurements from ice core samples from 1561 to 1994 show that the 1859 storm was the most intense in that 433 year time span [McCracken, 2001].
EHV transformers are large, custom designed, and very expensive, so there are few spares. A representative of one, large, electrical provider estimated its number of spare EHV transformers “would be a single digit percentage” [comment of Mr. Heyeck of American Electric Power at the FERC Technical Staff Conference, April 30, 2012]. By 2009, almost no EHV transformers were made in the U.S. However, because 70% of our “fleet” of 2148 EHV transformers is at least 25 years old and 50% is at or beyond its 40-year design lifetime, demand has been increasing since 2002 [Kappenman, Meta-R-319, 2010]. This means that around 1074 new vulnerable transformers, an investment of over $5 billion, will be installed shortly. So, four new EHV/HV transformer plants have been constructed in the U.S. since 2010.
In 2010 the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability issued “Large Transformers and the U.S. Electric Grid” that stated there were six plants producing large transformers in the U.S. Those plants satisfied only 15% of domestic demand. The other 85% was imported. From 2007-2011 an average of 500 Large Power Transformers (LPTs) were imported each year.
Even with four new transformer plants, we still have limited production capability in the U.S. If 365 EHV transformers go down, as the modeling suggests, many will stay down a long time. Although the normal lead time for an EHV transformer is about 12 months, it can be 20 months in some cases [DOE, 2012]. Will they even be able to produce replacement transformers with large parts of the grid down? How long will it take under those conditions?
Ramping up production is seriously impacted by the raw materials for EHV transformers. Even when produced here, many of the materials come from overseas. Copper and “electrical steel” will become very sought after, and not just in the U.S. There were only 13 manufacturers in the world of electrical steel and only a handful of them capable of producing the high-permeability core steel used in LPT cores. Only one is in the U.S. [DOE, 2014]. If the storm affects the whole northern hemisphere, or even the world, know that even though China is a huge transformer producer, it still has to import transformers. Now try to envision the competition for imported transformers. One study suggested that long waits would ensue and “prioritizing delivery to customers would become a politically charged issue” [CENTRA, 2011, p 30]. Also, “If you don’t invest in [hardening] it’s hard to argue you should be first in line for replacement transformers.” [FEMA, Feb. 2010 workshop – Managing Critical Disasters in the Transatlantic Domain – the Case of the Geomagnetic Storm]
So, why has the grid become so vulnerable? First, nobody is responsible for the grid. The grid is really just a bunch of contracts and agreements between competing companies to move electricity among them. The system has three components– the generating plants, EHV and HV transmission lines, and the lower voltage lines that step down voltages and distribute the juice from the transmission lines to local customers. To move electricity most efficiently, transmission voltages are high to minimize resistance. The low resistance increases vulnerability to GICs. A 765kV line permits GICs ten times higher than a 115kV line [NERC, “HILF Event Risk to the North American Bulk Power System“, 2009]. The cost considerations also result in a preponderance of single phase and autotransformers, instead of the more durable 3-phase transformers. Finally, the desire to buy inexpensive power a long way away means there are more and more miles of EHV transmission lines. These lines are like antennae; the longer they are, the more current they collect. The age of the transformer fleet also increases its vulnerability.
In 2011 CENTRA Technology, Inc., on behalf of the Office of Risk Management, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, looked at likely consequences of power outages in 20 industries during the storm, one week later, and one month later. During the storm, there are widespread impacts due to the loss of power. Gas stations are unable to refuel vehicles, including freight haulers. Lack of power prevents people from getting their money or spending it. Dark traffic signals impede highway transportation. As backup generators come online, the impacts are reduced for services, such as hospitals, public water and sewer utilities, and emergency services.
The CENTRA report notes that, “…most continuity plans suffice for a period of days, not weeks”. After one week (or less) backup generators begin to run out of fuel. Nuclear power plants have backup power for “…up to 7 days, depending on location and circumstances” [Singh Matharu, NRC, in comments at the FERC Staff Technical Conference on GMD, April 30, 2012]. After that, how do they pump cooling water to the spent rod storage pools? The CENTRA report summarizes, “The concerns as time progresses after the storm grow from economic losses to major health and safety issues” (page 32). When I asked the director of a metropolitan utility how much fuel he had onsite for pumps for the water system, the answer was “about two days”. The answer was the same for chemicals for water and sewage treatment. Our economy is based more and more on “just in time” delivery.
The 100-Year Geomagnetic Storm and The Electric Grid – Part 2, by Tango Delta
Defense Strategies
If you’re not ready for TEOTWAWKI, you’re probably asking, “Can’t we do something to keep the grid from going down?” The answer is “yes”. There are two approaches– early warning and hardening of equipment.
In theory, early warning relies on the ACE and DSCOVR satellites, located one million miles from the earth, to measure the intensity and polarity of a storm and then issue warnings, which utilities would use to take steps to protect their equipment. In reality, large storms are too fast, allowing maybe 15 minutes of warning. Nuclear plants are supposed to be in “cold shutdown” if outside power is expected to be lost. There is no way to do that in 15 minutes. If a utility wants to take pre-emptive action, it has to shut down before it knows the polarity of the storm. Polarity is key, because a huge storm with the wrong polarity may be no danger. The CEO who blacks out his system for a false alarm will be gone. So, no utility will do it. Nobody will say that early warning is not a practical defense, especially after we just spent $340 million to launch DSCOVR. However, GIC is generated by both geomagnetic storms and by the E3 component of a High-altitude ElectroMagnetic Pulse (HEMP) nuclear detonation. A HEMP detonation over New York City is predicted to take out 551 EHV transformers, which is 51% more than the 365 predicted from a 100-year geomagnetic storm, and there will be no warning for a HEMP! However, hardening provides protection from both sources of GIC.
So hardening is the other preventive action. The goal of hardening is to have your equipment be able to ride out a storm without depending on human operators to make all the right choices at just the right time. The definitive source is John Kappenman’s Meta R-322 report, “Low Frequency Protection Concepts for Electric Power Grids: Geomagnetically Induced Current (GIC) and E-3 HEMP Mitigation”, in which he describes three basic choices– series capacitors, neutral blocking capacitors, and neutral resistors.
Series capacitors are installed on the transmission lines. They completely block GICs on lines where they are installed, and their “reactive power contribution is instantaneous and self-regulatory.” [Gruenbaum & Rasmussen, Series Capacitors for Increased Power Transmission Capability of a 500kV Grid Interconnect, pg 2. undated] They are the preferred choice in the long EHV lines in the western U.S. and Quebec, because they have the everyday financial benefit of providing “a considerable increase of the power transmission capacity over the corridor, reducing or postponing the need for additional transmission lines” [Gruenbaum & Rasmussen, p 6]. The down side to this option is that they are very expensive and the control mechanisms are subject to being tricked by the harmonics from GICs, potentially resulting in loss of reactive power just when needed most to maintain voltages during a geomagnetic storm. Also, modeling of their use in the western U.S. indicates that they would only reduce total GICs by 13-22% and in Quebec by about 30% for the entire system [Kappenman, Meta R-322, pp 3-4].
Neutral blocking capacitors completely block GICs in their transformers. However, by completely blocking these currents, they force the current elsewhere in the system, like series capacitors. Since the grid needs to be grounded for fault conditions, bypasses need to be added. These two issues vastly complicate the engineering of these devices over a system and add considerable expense. A FEMA workshop in February of 2010 concluded, “Hardening EHV lines and transformers through the installation of neutral-blocking capacitors is possible. But doing it for all utilities supporting 345kV and above is economically prohibitive.” Still, for a very at-risk high value EHV transformer, they may be the only option. After the 1989 storm, Quebec Hydro spent C$1.2 billion (C$32/person served) on a combination of series capacitors and neutral blocking capacitors.
The third option, and the one clearly preferred by Kappenman for most locations, is the low-ohm neutral resistor. The neutral resistor only blocks about 60% of the GIC flow through it. In the 100-year storm model, modified to include 1388 (about half of the eastern U.S. “fleet”) lower voltage 230kV transformers, 551 of 3550 transformers are predicted to be damaged. With 5-ohm resistors on all transformers, only 37 are damaged, which is a 93% reduction. [Meta R-322, figure 7-19 and pg. 7-14] Neutral resistors do not interfere with normal fault protection and are simple devices, which makes them the low-cost alternative.
A fourth option is to mitigate impacts from the storm (not necessarily the damages) by stockpiling spare transformers and other equipment, adding more backup generators and greatly increasing fuel supplies for all backups. However, buying spare transformers is expensive and risky, because you don’t know exactly which ones will fail.
Cost estimates for hardening are all over the map. John Kappenman, the primary author of the Metatech 2008 report, has been quoted as estimating $1 billion for “hardening and stocking replacement parts” [personal communication with Matthew Stein, When Technology Fails, NEXUS magazine article 2008]. The latest estimate I found was from Congressional sub-committee testimony by Joseph McClelland, director of the Office of Electric Energy Reliability for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on June 12, 2012. He estimated the cost of hardening (type not specified) electrical grids against geomagnetic disturbances at $500,000 per transformer. For low-ohm neutral resistors total estimated costs, including peripherals and installation is $40-100,000 for each resistor [Meta R-322, p. xi]. If the 3550 transformers in the expanded 100-year storm model were all protected the maximum cost would be $355 million (or $1.15 per person) for a hardened national grid. This is minuscule compared to the trillions it would cost to recover from a 100-year storm.
There have been three bills introduced in Congress to require protection of the national grid– the GRID Act, the SHIELD Act, and the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act (CIPA). The sponsors of the GRID Act surveyed 150 companies in the bulk power industry and found that only 27% of the 90 respondents had “taken specific measures to protect against or respond to geomagnetic storms” and that “most utilities do not own spare transformers“ [Electric Grid Vulnerability, staff report of Congressmen Markey and Waxman, May 2013]. This indicates how little the power industry is doing voluntarily to address the grid’s vulnerability. It motivated the sponsors to re-introduce the GRID Act. None of the three bills have made it through Congress.
Maine was the first state to pass its own requirement for grid protection. Other states may follow, but it’s hard to imagine states having more success than federal legislators.
In 2012, with the early bills bogged down in Congress, FERC took the unprecedented step of issuing FERC Order 779, requiring the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) to establish minimum reliability standards for protection from geomagnetic storms and GICs. NERC is a unique organization that is the agency appointed to establish reliability standards for the electric industry. Its membership consists of the companies it regulates, and it takes 75% membership approval to pass a new standard. The grid– this country’s most critical infrastructure– is self-regulated. The exception to this is nuclear power plants, which are under the jurisdiction of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
NERC’s membership approved reliability standards for GICs in December of 2014. Power industry watchdog groups have attacked the NERC “100-year benchmark storm” as “junk science” [Dr. Peter Pry, Ex. Dir. of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, in comments to the “The Blaze” 10/24/2014]. A summary of the comments from reviewers of the NERC draft standards in October of 2014 identifies the following defects in the proposed standards:
1. The benchmark 100-year storm is 1170 nT/min at 60 degrees of magnetic latitude while previous research has established the 100-year storm to be 4000-5000 nT/min at 50-55 degrees magnetic latitude.
2. The NERC standard, when compared to actual measurements in previous storms, underestimates by 100-400%. When Kappenman’s 100-year storm model is subjected to the same scrutiny, it is generally within 20%.
3. There have been three storms in just the past 40 years that “greatly exceed” the benchmark standard [comments of Kappenman and Birnbach on Draft Standard TPL-007-1, submitted to NERC October 10, 2014]. Actual measurements in Tillamok, Oregon for a storm on Oct. 30, 2003 illustrates that the benchmark standard extrapolated per the NERC formula is only 1/30 of what is expected in a real 100-year storm.
When the proposed reliability standard is forwarded to FERC, they may only approve (without modifications) or disapprove. In an interview with “The Blaze” in October of 2014, Dr. Peter Pry commented, “It is better to have no GMD (geomagnetic disturbance) standard than a fake GMD standard that will lull policymakers and the public into complacency about an existential threat to our civilization.” It is believed by some that NERC wants a minimal standard approved by FERC. When catastrophe happens they can then dodge liability by claiming that their members “met the federal standard.”
The vulnerability of EHV transformers to HEMP and geomagnetic GICs is real and resulting damages are a matter of when, not if. FEMA-style recovery is not feasible for long term nationwide impacts. Early warning is impractical for geomagnetic storms and non-existent for HEMP attacks. Hardening appears to be the only logical approach to preventing economic and societal collapse, and a program of primarily low-ohm resistors seems the clear affordable path to transformer protection. FERC rule-making is not getting the reliability standards that are needed, and most legislative solutions follow a similar NERC reliability standards approach.
No modern power system has ever experienced a 100-year geomagnetic storm, so investor-owned (for profit) utility company execs cannot get their heads around the dire consequences of Kappenman’s model. But how can they be so blind to the fact that it is far less expensive to prevent damages than to pay the consequences of outages, much less the cost of transformer replacements, especially when they can pass the costs on to their customers?
In “Risk Mitigation in the Electric Power Sector: Serious Attention Needed”, Daniel C. Hurley, et al state that “the private sector generally will not invest in activities which negatively impact the bottom line or for which a known steady return on investment does not exist. Thus it falls to the government to invest in activities measured not by return on investment but rather in terms of the “common good“. When neither the private sector nor the government see the benefit of spending $1.15 per person to prevent TEOTWAWKI, it is left to informed individuals to spend thousands to fend for themselves. A 100-year geomagnetic storm is an inevitable natural event. Add to it the other grid threats of HEMP, physical attack, and cyber attack and preparing for a grid down world makes more sense than ever.
survivalblog.com/the-100-year-geomagnetic-storm-and-the-electric-grid-part-2-by-tango-delta/
survivalblog.com/the-100-year-geomagnetic-storm-and-the-electric-grid-part-1-by-tango-delta/
An average of once every one hundred years the sun takes aim at earth and launches a ginormous coronal mass ejection(CME). Less than a day later, it arrives as a cloud of charged particles and hits the earth’s magnetic field. It has a southern polarity and, therefore, “couples” with the earth’s magnetosphere, creating swirling “electrojets” of charged particles 100km above the earth. These produce geomagnetically-induced currents (GIC) in the earth itself. These currents flow into the grounding mechanisms of large Extra High Voltage (EHV) transmission towers. The current then flows through the transmission lines and into the EHV transformers in the system. This quasi-DC current (in an AC system) produces “half cycle saturation” that overheats and permanently damages those $5-10 million boxcar-sized transformers. The current also produces harmonics that can damage or trick other components in the system, resulting in a collapse of the grid. The most important EHV transformers are the Generator Step Up (GSU) units located at nuclear or equally large coal generating plants. When these transformers fail, there is no way to get power from the plant to the grid. The icing on this cake is that it takes about a year to order, manufacture, and install a replacement EHV transformer (when the grid is up everywhere).
The Situation
In 2008 a leading geomagnetic storm researcher developed a model to simulate the effects of another 100-year storm on the modern electric grid. The study, “Severe Space Weather Events; Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts” done by Metatech, an electric industry consultant (working for the Congressional EMP Commission and FEMA, not the Sierra Club), predicted that in a geomagnetic storm equivalent to the 1921 “100-year storm” approximately 365 EHV transformers would fail. The grid could not compensate for that many failures, leading to collapse east of a line from Chicago to Memphis to Jacksonville, FL and in the Pacific Northwest. The estimate for full recovery is four to ten years at a cost of trillions of dollars. The above is not the worst case scenario. The modeled storm is centered over southern Canada. If it is farther south, the predicted damage is over 600 EHV transformers. The model only examines transformers down to 345kV. Many 230kV transformers will fail, too. Also, storms larger than the 100-year storm have struck us in the past.
This vulnerability was first documented with the 1989 Quebec Hydro storm. A moderate-sized storm took Quebec and part of the Northeast grid offline in 92 seconds, put six million people in the dark, and immediately damaged two EHV transformers in Quebec and one in the U.S. The two Quebec transformers were not damaged directly by the GIC but by “the uncontrolled operation of circuit breakers in rapid succession” causing overloads as the grid collapsed. [Kappenman, Meta-R-319 p.2-12, 2010.] Also noteworthy is that 11 nuclear power plant GSU transformers needed to be replaced over the next two years, indicating that even if GIC doesn’t immediately kill a transformer, it can greatly shorten its life. The cost of this storm has been estimated at $360-645 million [Tsurutani, et al, Journal of Geophysical Research, 3July2003 online]. In the “Halloween Storms” of Oct-Nov 2003, a series of storms destroyed 14 EHV transformers in South Africa [NERC, HILF, 2009]. These storms produced lower GICs, but they lasted for several days. The transformers failed over a period of 10 months following the storms, so there was no massive blackout during the storm. Instead, there were brownouts and rolling blackouts as transformers failed. This storm was also important because previously these latitudes from the magnetic poles (equivalent to southern California and Florida) were thought to be safe from damaging GICs.
Another important event occurred in 2003. A high voltage line touched a tree and precipitated a collapse of the grid from Ohio to New York City. This put 50 million people in the dark. It was important, since it showed that even 14 years after the 1989 storm we could not prevent cascading collapses of the grid. The minimum cost estimate for the blackout is $6 billion [CENTRA, 2011]. Later, we will see that blackouts cost much more than hardening the grid to prevent grid damage and collapses.
There have been other more powerful storms, but they pre-date a modern electrical grid. The 1921 “Railroad Storm” is named for the impacts to railroad signaling and switching devices, as well as the trans-Atlantic cable and telegraph systems. It has been estimated to have been ten times the intensity of the 1989 Quebec Hydro storm [Meta R-322 p. 7-5]. It is considered the “100-year” geomagnetic storm and is the basis of the Metatech modeling from 2008 and 2010.
The largest recorded geomagnetic storm was the “Carrington event”. The name is from the astronomer who was actually looking (indirectly) at the sun in 1859 when the CME erupted. Nitrates are produced in the atmosphere above the poles by geomagnetic storms and settle to the polar ice. Measurements from ice core samples from 1561 to 1994 show that the 1859 storm was the most intense in that 433 year time span [McCracken, 2001].
EHV transformers are large, custom designed, and very expensive, so there are few spares. A representative of one, large, electrical provider estimated its number of spare EHV transformers “would be a single digit percentage” [comment of Mr. Heyeck of American Electric Power at the FERC Technical Staff Conference, April 30, 2012]. By 2009, almost no EHV transformers were made in the U.S. However, because 70% of our “fleet” of 2148 EHV transformers is at least 25 years old and 50% is at or beyond its 40-year design lifetime, demand has been increasing since 2002 [Kappenman, Meta-R-319, 2010]. This means that around 1074 new vulnerable transformers, an investment of over $5 billion, will be installed shortly. So, four new EHV/HV transformer plants have been constructed in the U.S. since 2010.
In 2010 the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability issued “Large Transformers and the U.S. Electric Grid” that stated there were six plants producing large transformers in the U.S. Those plants satisfied only 15% of domestic demand. The other 85% was imported. From 2007-2011 an average of 500 Large Power Transformers (LPTs) were imported each year.
Even with four new transformer plants, we still have limited production capability in the U.S. If 365 EHV transformers go down, as the modeling suggests, many will stay down a long time. Although the normal lead time for an EHV transformer is about 12 months, it can be 20 months in some cases [DOE, 2012]. Will they even be able to produce replacement transformers with large parts of the grid down? How long will it take under those conditions?
Ramping up production is seriously impacted by the raw materials for EHV transformers. Even when produced here, many of the materials come from overseas. Copper and “electrical steel” will become very sought after, and not just in the U.S. There were only 13 manufacturers in the world of electrical steel and only a handful of them capable of producing the high-permeability core steel used in LPT cores. Only one is in the U.S. [DOE, 2014]. If the storm affects the whole northern hemisphere, or even the world, know that even though China is a huge transformer producer, it still has to import transformers. Now try to envision the competition for imported transformers. One study suggested that long waits would ensue and “prioritizing delivery to customers would become a politically charged issue” [CENTRA, 2011, p 30]. Also, “If you don’t invest in [hardening] it’s hard to argue you should be first in line for replacement transformers.” [FEMA, Feb. 2010 workshop – Managing Critical Disasters in the Transatlantic Domain – the Case of the Geomagnetic Storm]
So, why has the grid become so vulnerable? First, nobody is responsible for the grid. The grid is really just a bunch of contracts and agreements between competing companies to move electricity among them. The system has three components– the generating plants, EHV and HV transmission lines, and the lower voltage lines that step down voltages and distribute the juice from the transmission lines to local customers. To move electricity most efficiently, transmission voltages are high to minimize resistance. The low resistance increases vulnerability to GICs. A 765kV line permits GICs ten times higher than a 115kV line [NERC, “HILF Event Risk to the North American Bulk Power System“, 2009]. The cost considerations also result in a preponderance of single phase and autotransformers, instead of the more durable 3-phase transformers. Finally, the desire to buy inexpensive power a long way away means there are more and more miles of EHV transmission lines. These lines are like antennae; the longer they are, the more current they collect. The age of the transformer fleet also increases its vulnerability.
In 2011 CENTRA Technology, Inc., on behalf of the Office of Risk Management, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, looked at likely consequences of power outages in 20 industries during the storm, one week later, and one month later. During the storm, there are widespread impacts due to the loss of power. Gas stations are unable to refuel vehicles, including freight haulers. Lack of power prevents people from getting their money or spending it. Dark traffic signals impede highway transportation. As backup generators come online, the impacts are reduced for services, such as hospitals, public water and sewer utilities, and emergency services.
The CENTRA report notes that, “…most continuity plans suffice for a period of days, not weeks”. After one week (or less) backup generators begin to run out of fuel. Nuclear power plants have backup power for “…up to 7 days, depending on location and circumstances” [Singh Matharu, NRC, in comments at the FERC Staff Technical Conference on GMD, April 30, 2012]. After that, how do they pump cooling water to the spent rod storage pools? The CENTRA report summarizes, “The concerns as time progresses after the storm grow from economic losses to major health and safety issues” (page 32). When I asked the director of a metropolitan utility how much fuel he had onsite for pumps for the water system, the answer was “about two days”. The answer was the same for chemicals for water and sewage treatment. Our economy is based more and more on “just in time” delivery.
The 100-Year Geomagnetic Storm and The Electric Grid – Part 2, by Tango Delta
Defense Strategies
If you’re not ready for TEOTWAWKI, you’re probably asking, “Can’t we do something to keep the grid from going down?” The answer is “yes”. There are two approaches– early warning and hardening of equipment.
In theory, early warning relies on the ACE and DSCOVR satellites, located one million miles from the earth, to measure the intensity and polarity of a storm and then issue warnings, which utilities would use to take steps to protect their equipment. In reality, large storms are too fast, allowing maybe 15 minutes of warning. Nuclear plants are supposed to be in “cold shutdown” if outside power is expected to be lost. There is no way to do that in 15 minutes. If a utility wants to take pre-emptive action, it has to shut down before it knows the polarity of the storm. Polarity is key, because a huge storm with the wrong polarity may be no danger. The CEO who blacks out his system for a false alarm will be gone. So, no utility will do it. Nobody will say that early warning is not a practical defense, especially after we just spent $340 million to launch DSCOVR. However, GIC is generated by both geomagnetic storms and by the E3 component of a High-altitude ElectroMagnetic Pulse (HEMP) nuclear detonation. A HEMP detonation over New York City is predicted to take out 551 EHV transformers, which is 51% more than the 365 predicted from a 100-year geomagnetic storm, and there will be no warning for a HEMP! However, hardening provides protection from both sources of GIC.
So hardening is the other preventive action. The goal of hardening is to have your equipment be able to ride out a storm without depending on human operators to make all the right choices at just the right time. The definitive source is John Kappenman’s Meta R-322 report, “Low Frequency Protection Concepts for Electric Power Grids: Geomagnetically Induced Current (GIC) and E-3 HEMP Mitigation”, in which he describes three basic choices– series capacitors, neutral blocking capacitors, and neutral resistors.
Series capacitors are installed on the transmission lines. They completely block GICs on lines where they are installed, and their “reactive power contribution is instantaneous and self-regulatory.” [Gruenbaum & Rasmussen, Series Capacitors for Increased Power Transmission Capability of a 500kV Grid Interconnect, pg 2. undated] They are the preferred choice in the long EHV lines in the western U.S. and Quebec, because they have the everyday financial benefit of providing “a considerable increase of the power transmission capacity over the corridor, reducing or postponing the need for additional transmission lines” [Gruenbaum & Rasmussen, p 6]. The down side to this option is that they are very expensive and the control mechanisms are subject to being tricked by the harmonics from GICs, potentially resulting in loss of reactive power just when needed most to maintain voltages during a geomagnetic storm. Also, modeling of their use in the western U.S. indicates that they would only reduce total GICs by 13-22% and in Quebec by about 30% for the entire system [Kappenman, Meta R-322, pp 3-4].
Neutral blocking capacitors completely block GICs in their transformers. However, by completely blocking these currents, they force the current elsewhere in the system, like series capacitors. Since the grid needs to be grounded for fault conditions, bypasses need to be added. These two issues vastly complicate the engineering of these devices over a system and add considerable expense. A FEMA workshop in February of 2010 concluded, “Hardening EHV lines and transformers through the installation of neutral-blocking capacitors is possible. But doing it for all utilities supporting 345kV and above is economically prohibitive.” Still, for a very at-risk high value EHV transformer, they may be the only option. After the 1989 storm, Quebec Hydro spent C$1.2 billion (C$32/person served) on a combination of series capacitors and neutral blocking capacitors.
The third option, and the one clearly preferred by Kappenman for most locations, is the low-ohm neutral resistor. The neutral resistor only blocks about 60% of the GIC flow through it. In the 100-year storm model, modified to include 1388 (about half of the eastern U.S. “fleet”) lower voltage 230kV transformers, 551 of 3550 transformers are predicted to be damaged. With 5-ohm resistors on all transformers, only 37 are damaged, which is a 93% reduction. [Meta R-322, figure 7-19 and pg. 7-14] Neutral resistors do not interfere with normal fault protection and are simple devices, which makes them the low-cost alternative.
A fourth option is to mitigate impacts from the storm (not necessarily the damages) by stockpiling spare transformers and other equipment, adding more backup generators and greatly increasing fuel supplies for all backups. However, buying spare transformers is expensive and risky, because you don’t know exactly which ones will fail.
Cost estimates for hardening are all over the map. John Kappenman, the primary author of the Metatech 2008 report, has been quoted as estimating $1 billion for “hardening and stocking replacement parts” [personal communication with Matthew Stein, When Technology Fails, NEXUS magazine article 2008]. The latest estimate I found was from Congressional sub-committee testimony by Joseph McClelland, director of the Office of Electric Energy Reliability for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on June 12, 2012. He estimated the cost of hardening (type not specified) electrical grids against geomagnetic disturbances at $500,000 per transformer. For low-ohm neutral resistors total estimated costs, including peripherals and installation is $40-100,000 for each resistor [Meta R-322, p. xi]. If the 3550 transformers in the expanded 100-year storm model were all protected the maximum cost would be $355 million (or $1.15 per person) for a hardened national grid. This is minuscule compared to the trillions it would cost to recover from a 100-year storm.
There have been three bills introduced in Congress to require protection of the national grid– the GRID Act, the SHIELD Act, and the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act (CIPA). The sponsors of the GRID Act surveyed 150 companies in the bulk power industry and found that only 27% of the 90 respondents had “taken specific measures to protect against or respond to geomagnetic storms” and that “most utilities do not own spare transformers“ [Electric Grid Vulnerability, staff report of Congressmen Markey and Waxman, May 2013]. This indicates how little the power industry is doing voluntarily to address the grid’s vulnerability. It motivated the sponsors to re-introduce the GRID Act. None of the three bills have made it through Congress.
Maine was the first state to pass its own requirement for grid protection. Other states may follow, but it’s hard to imagine states having more success than federal legislators.
In 2012, with the early bills bogged down in Congress, FERC took the unprecedented step of issuing FERC Order 779, requiring the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) to establish minimum reliability standards for protection from geomagnetic storms and GICs. NERC is a unique organization that is the agency appointed to establish reliability standards for the electric industry. Its membership consists of the companies it regulates, and it takes 75% membership approval to pass a new standard. The grid– this country’s most critical infrastructure– is self-regulated. The exception to this is nuclear power plants, which are under the jurisdiction of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
NERC’s membership approved reliability standards for GICs in December of 2014. Power industry watchdog groups have attacked the NERC “100-year benchmark storm” as “junk science” [Dr. Peter Pry, Ex. Dir. of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, in comments to the “The Blaze” 10/24/2014]. A summary of the comments from reviewers of the NERC draft standards in October of 2014 identifies the following defects in the proposed standards:
1. The benchmark 100-year storm is 1170 nT/min at 60 degrees of magnetic latitude while previous research has established the 100-year storm to be 4000-5000 nT/min at 50-55 degrees magnetic latitude.
2. The NERC standard, when compared to actual measurements in previous storms, underestimates by 100-400%. When Kappenman’s 100-year storm model is subjected to the same scrutiny, it is generally within 20%.
3. There have been three storms in just the past 40 years that “greatly exceed” the benchmark standard [comments of Kappenman and Birnbach on Draft Standard TPL-007-1, submitted to NERC October 10, 2014]. Actual measurements in Tillamok, Oregon for a storm on Oct. 30, 2003 illustrates that the benchmark standard extrapolated per the NERC formula is only 1/30 of what is expected in a real 100-year storm.
When the proposed reliability standard is forwarded to FERC, they may only approve (without modifications) or disapprove. In an interview with “The Blaze” in October of 2014, Dr. Peter Pry commented, “It is better to have no GMD (geomagnetic disturbance) standard than a fake GMD standard that will lull policymakers and the public into complacency about an existential threat to our civilization.” It is believed by some that NERC wants a minimal standard approved by FERC. When catastrophe happens they can then dodge liability by claiming that their members “met the federal standard.”
The vulnerability of EHV transformers to HEMP and geomagnetic GICs is real and resulting damages are a matter of when, not if. FEMA-style recovery is not feasible for long term nationwide impacts. Early warning is impractical for geomagnetic storms and non-existent for HEMP attacks. Hardening appears to be the only logical approach to preventing economic and societal collapse, and a program of primarily low-ohm resistors seems the clear affordable path to transformer protection. FERC rule-making is not getting the reliability standards that are needed, and most legislative solutions follow a similar NERC reliability standards approach.
No modern power system has ever experienced a 100-year geomagnetic storm, so investor-owned (for profit) utility company execs cannot get their heads around the dire consequences of Kappenman’s model. But how can they be so blind to the fact that it is far less expensive to prevent damages than to pay the consequences of outages, much less the cost of transformer replacements, especially when they can pass the costs on to their customers?
In “Risk Mitigation in the Electric Power Sector: Serious Attention Needed”, Daniel C. Hurley, et al state that “the private sector generally will not invest in activities which negatively impact the bottom line or for which a known steady return on investment does not exist. Thus it falls to the government to invest in activities measured not by return on investment but rather in terms of the “common good“. When neither the private sector nor the government see the benefit of spending $1.15 per person to prevent TEOTWAWKI, it is left to informed individuals to spend thousands to fend for themselves. A 100-year geomagnetic storm is an inevitable natural event. Add to it the other grid threats of HEMP, physical attack, and cyber attack and preparing for a grid down world makes more sense than ever.
survivalblog.com/the-100-year-geomagnetic-storm-and-the-electric-grid-part-2-by-tango-delta/
survivalblog.com/the-100-year-geomagnetic-storm-and-the-electric-grid-part-1-by-tango-delta/
