How a solar storm two years ago nearly caused a catastrophe on Earth

Nope.

 

How about barely a year ago, July 15, 2013?
Plug pulled on the world's last commercial electric telegraph system
The End of an Era: India Shutters its Telegraph System

 

Well, apart from that one...

I tend to ignore landline systems as my main interest is undersea (submarine) cables, all the way back to 1850. These were used for telegraph messages from then until the early 1960s, when all the remaining traffic was moved onto undersea telephone circuits. Soon after that, all the submarine telegraph cables were abandoned in place (you can still haul up sections today) and the associated shore equipment was scrapped.

Today just a few telegraph cable stations remain worldwide, out of the hundreds once in use. If you're ever on Cape Cod this one is worth a visit:
French Cable Station Museum - Home Page

 

Astronomer Phil Plait has a good writeup on this in his blog post today, including the potential effects on satellites and power systems:
Solar storm: A massive 2012 CME just missed the Earth.

 

Could someone comment on the utility of the range of surge protector technology vs. voltage transients from 'charged particle' events? I guess they work for nearby lightning strikes, but...

In this scenario, the distribution grid is fried (per ftl) but your boxes at the outlet end get protected. So you can use them if the power ever comes back on.

Let's bring this back home - how big of a solar storm would it take to bake a Prius?

 

I'd expect powerline surges from CMEs to be sustained events, driven by motion of the Earth's magnetic field under the solar-driven storm. They will continue for some time, similar to the length of a nice Aurora Borealis display. This is far longer than the quick transients addressed by common surge protectors. I'd expect such protectors to soon exceed their energy limits and fail.

But I'm not sure how much of the surges will appear at household wall outlets. Most of the problem appears in very long wires with some sort of ground connection at each end. Long distance power lines tend to suffer excessive DC offsets, which causes imbalance and overheating in the transformer banks. Old telegraph lines were single wire, using the ground as a return path, so the excess DC was applied directly to the telegraph receiver, which sometimes burned.

The DC offset itself doesn't pass through the transformers from input to output. But because transformers will saturate and show non-linear behavior, that offset will distort the AC output waveforms, which may cause problems with the attached appliances, and lead to additional DC offsets. But I believe the problems are the worst at the big transformers coming off the lone lines, and should be reduced by each local step-down transformer and shorter distribution circuit along the chain to household wall outlets.

How big of a solar storm would it take to bake a Prius itself? For a Plug-in Prius, I suspect that it would have to be big enough that the fate of the Prius is no longer a primary concern. For a non-plugin Prius, the storm would have to be so big that the Prius' fate is absolutely no concern whatsoever.

 

Example of a media story that it is easy to dislike:

Catastrophic solar superstorm is overdue to hit Earth, scientist says | Geekquinox - Yahoo News Canada

Headline: We're overdue
Actual information: 50% chance during the next 70 years.

Now 50/70 is bad enough, presuming that there is a firm basis for the prediction. Better I should think to examine the basis for the prediction, than for our reporter to present himself as yet another bad example.

 

Glad to see a post from you. Is everything OK in Kunming, then? Did you feel the earthquake?

 

There is a bright side. Some one might come up with a solar flair energy harvesting collector and get power while many other lose power. ROI might not be so great however.

 

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