Geomagnetic activity vs. HF in the tropics

[JayM]

I've noticed that HF conditions in SE Asia (Philippines to be more precise) are poor whenever the geomagnetic field is anything above quiet. I thought that geomagnetic activity and storms affected HF only, or mostly, in higher latitudes?

[Drax Spacex]

HF noise levels can be elevated globally during geomagnetic storms at all latitudes.  Frequencies below 10MHz are most affected.  HF blackouts can occur at high latitudes due to Polar Cap Absorption events.  

[JayM]

That must be what's happening here. The most-active band is 40 meters and it goes completely dead when there's geomagnetic activity.

 

[Lily Lane]

I spend most of my radio time on 75 meters, a couple times a day on 40, and both have been crummy when geomagnetic activity is up. Especially now in this sun cycle. 

Let's just hope there's no Carrington even, or perhaps our hobby will be toast, unless you have and EMP and faraday protection devices. Also battery backup. I have hope

we won't experience such an event. Only the sun knows ... hi hi  

[KW2P]

A Carrington Event won't affect your station. Powerful geomagnetic storms affect larger / longer structures like power lines, especially long distance power lines, long landline phone lines, long metal fences, etc.  When Earth's magnetic field moves or changes it induces currents in conductors. When the magnetic field changes over short time scales (minutes) it induces large enough DC currents in long conductors to create problems.

If you have 2,000 foot long Beverage antennas, for example, the little matching transformer at the end might be toast but probably not. On the other hand, the same will happen when you have nearby lightning strikes. Replacing those transformers is a routine thing if you have Beverages.

I wouldn't worry about station damage from a Carrington Event. None of the structures at your station are large enough to be significantly affected. The danger is to power utilities that haven't taken precautions and don't have procedures for shutting down and disconnecting their long-distance transmission lines when they get warning of an approaching monster CME. Many utilities have done the needed upgrades and new equipment takes the danger into account. If mitigating measures are not in place, then there will be some ruined substation transformers. The problem with that is you can't just pick up the phone and buy a new 30 MVA transformer.  They must be custom built and have long lead times. Not to mention the time and hassle of transporting and replacing a device that weighs tens of tons. In a major event there will likely be power outages that last for months.

[Philalethes]

14 hours ago, KW2P said:

The problem with that is you can't just pick up the phone and buy a new 30 MVA transformer.  They must be custom built and have long lead times. Not to mention the time and hassle of transporting and replacing a device that weighs tens of tons. In a major event there will likely be power outages that last for months.

Imagine trying to replace this in a jiffy.

[Newbie]

1 hour ago, Philalethes Bythos said:

Imagine trying to replace this in a jiffy.

Yeah good luck. I wonder how many copies they built just in case? Lol

N.

[WildWill]

On 8/16/2022 at 4:36 AM, Newbie said:

Yeah good luck. I wonder how many copies they built just in case? Lol

N.

I am certain they have a plan in case it should go down. That's a very specialized piece of equipment.  Most of the "pipes and wires" utilities have plans in place for the failure of any part of the system.  Right down the street from me is the Centerpoint Energy operations center, sugar land.

They've got a dozen transformers in their lot, outside. Also, keep in mind that most transformers and other equipment is protected by a line fuse. That's why lightning doesn't take out a dozen transformers a day...

I won a project at Westar Energy in Kansas about 15 years ago. The project was an assessment of their "current state" as well as their biggest risks and cost benefit analysis and build a business case for upgrading their work management system, and develop a asset management system for the to become more proactive in maintaining their system.
While this is not true of most utilities, they had equipment out in the field that they didn't even know about until it died - then they would have to search for it... no kidding, ever been to Kansas? It's really big and there ain't much on it 'ceptin' corn...  There are only like 2 gas stations between Topeka and Wichita  - at least that's how it was 15 years ago.

They have transformers out in the middle of nowhere that are 50-70 years old. Of course, if they have any documentation on it, it's really old and hard to find.  They manage their system using the philosophy "ain't broke, don't touch it" and "replace only when dead!". And they really don't have a choice, can't get spare parts or manuals for all this stuff! 
 

At the end of the assessment and business case development, they decided to replace their work management replacement and decided to stick with / replace when broken! Although, they did start documenting everything the repair crew run into.

There are other utilities in that kind of shape, but not that many.  The installed surge protection and breakers are generally able to deal with lightning just fine. Lightning is similar to the charged particle storms (geomagnetic) that light up the polar skies. Just more localized.  Lightning is plasma and millions of degrees!

Mostt equipment is well protected. Even long transmission lines have a number of safeguards in place.

on the transmission side, most of the transmission lines are protected from most damage a CME would cause. 
 

The two biggest issues on the transmission side are congestion overload and arcing!  Arcing is where the line has heated up because of the current/load on it and the line sags (thermal expansion) enough to arc to (the) ground...  which is usually a tree or large bush which is nice and dry!

California imports s lot of electricity from Oregon and Washington state. They have sagging problems every year. It'll cost a boatload of cash (100s only please!) to add another set of transmission lines through Northern California,

 

in Texas, one of the big problems is "congestion" on the transmission lines.  This occurs when the demand and load are not adequately distributed. In other words, the generation is "clumped together " and sharing the same transmission lines, while load is not evenly distributed either.  It a really big deal because even though you may have three paths to "ground" one is much better and the load needs to be redistributed by shutting units out and generating where it'll use another path and reduced the load on the congested path.

congrstion on the transmission lines can make things much worse because the line is already saturated..:  

Load Balancing in Texas last year costed $2.1 B last year. It'll cost mote to fix it all!!

In Amy case, most of the electrical grid is well protected. That's not the real problem. Very little damage would be caused by a significant CME to the electrical grid, permanent fan agent.

The real problem is in systems shutting down because of the storm, breakers popping, plants tripping (going off line ). And you end up with cascade failure.

Once the "Grid" goes down, the real problems begin. If the whole grid came down, it would take weeks to bring it back up.

on an electrical transmission/distribution network, the demand and load must equal. If your load becomes larger than your generation, the frequency goes up - normally it's 50-60Hz depending upon where you live. If you are not generating enough to cover the load, the frequency slows down. You see this as a surge or brown  out.  Both are really bad on everything you plug in...

Even with just  half the grid "up", you can bring more generation and more load, a little at a time until you have everyone back on.

If the "grid" were to come down completely, you have big problems. You have to be able to match load and generation as you bring it up. If ya don't, you are gonna blow out a lot of stuff!  Think about it, the whol grid is down. So to bring it back up, you are going to have to do it a tiny bit at a time until you get enough load/generation going such that the frequency is not so badly affected,...

There are other issued, but blown transformers, etc, are not the issue. The real problem is if the whole thing comes down.

last year, here in Texas, we had an ice storm that lasted a week. They had to shut out all the windmills, because they would freeze up in the cold and freezing rain,..  we get 20% of our electricity from wind. Then we lost a lot of natural gas generation, they came very close to losing the whole grid. People I know said it would take about 3 weeks to bring it back up!

it's not the damage from the storm, but losing the grid that is the real problem.

sorry for being so long winded !'

WnA

 

 

 

 

 

[KW2P]

On 8/16/2022 at 4:25 AM, Philalethes Bythos said:

Imagine trying to replace this in a jiffy.

Whoo hoo! That's a big ass transformer and EHV as well. Not an off-the-shelf item.

[JayM]

We had something similar a couple of years ago where a direct lightning strike took out the power grid for the entire southern Philippines. Luckily it apparently didn't affect any generators because power was restored within 8 or 9 hours. It happened in the middle of the night and my only notification of the power outage was my UPS's alarm waking me up. Anyway, I have an inverter generator now so if we have a longer-term outage I'll still be good other than the hassle of having to go get a gas can filled every few days. I'm also thinking of getting a small portable emergency solar generator and battery system for the daytime then I'd only use the gas generator for a few hours in the evenings if needed, which would conserve fuel.

[KW2P]

22 hours ago, JayM said:

We had something similar a couple of years ago where a direct lightning strike took out the power grid for the entire southern Philippines. Luckily it apparently didn't affect any generators because power was restored within 8 or 9 hours. It happened in the middle of the night and my only notification of the power outage was my UPS's alarm waking me up. Anyway, I have an inverter generator now so if we have a longer-term outage I'll still be good other than the hassle of having to go get a gas can filled every few days. I'm also thinking of getting a small portable emergency solar generator and battery system for the daytime then I'd only use the gas generator for a few hours in the evenings if needed, which would conserve fuel.

One word: Reclosers

I used to live in Florida. Florida gets a lot of big thunderstorms. Florida is flat and power lines are usually the highest thing around, so power lines get hit constantly. This used to cause frequent and long outages because crews had to come out and reset circuit breakers.

Today the problem is mitigated after the installation of thousands of reclosers. A recloser is a circuit breaker that retries. If a recloser blows, it waits two seconds, then recloses. You can program the number of retries, usually three before it gives up.

A lightning strike will trip circuit breakers but there's usually no lasting damage. The recloser operates and power is back on in a couple of seconds. If the damage is serious from a tree falling on the line, etc., the recloser will blow again and give up.

Given how it was in the past, it's remarkable today how power stays up in Florida right through nasty thunderstorms. The problem is, of course, cost. Reclosers are not cheap and thousands of them is serious money.  From what I could see and learn, FP&L (Florida Power & Light) runs a first-class operation, end-to-end. They have plenty of money and can afford to. Florida generates and uses a gigantic amount of electric power to run all the air-conditioning. If it wasn't for air-conditioning, there's be nothing there but cattle and sugar cane. Hahaha.

 

[Newbie]

1 hour ago, KW2P said:

If it wasn't for air-conditioning, there's be nothing there but cattle and sugar cane. Hahaha.

 

Hmm! What more could anyone want. Thinking about a big piece of rib-eye and a soda?

[Bry]

On 8/18/2022 at 2:23 PM, WildWill said:

It a really big deal because even though you may have three paths to "ground" one is much better and the load needs to be redistributed by shutting units out and generating where it'll use another path and reduced the load on the congested path.

Thanks so much for the long winded explanation! I really appreciate any insight, experience, or expertise... really settles my nerves and bones to know more about our electrical grid resiliancy.

i have particular concerns regarding any number of “grounds” one or three that still rely on the ground to be conductive or wet to dissipate the excess electrons generated from any short or fault. 

I am concerned that in areas where the water table is low or experiencing drought for other reasons might be more prone to outages and fires from lack of conductive ground. When there is a ground fault from a disturbance (branch, squirrel, cme, etc..) and the discharge gets sent to the ground and the ground is not wet, but resistive, I heard it can heat up and catch surrounding brush and duff on fire in a sizable radius.

This is especially a problem with dry brush and flammable hyrocarbons and gases in our soil locally. California sits on the Monterey formation so I assume many areas with basins, seeps and anticline (upside down v shaped) traps are more prone to collecting flammable gases and emitting them vis faults and  permeable sandy soils (Santa margarita formation).

 I have heard that aside from long or long transmission lines, and how much water is in the water table and rock itself, orientation of the geologic bedding below the powerline matters with regards to the magentic poles and dip. In other words: the orientation of the soil or rock bedding plane influences the vulnerability of an area to induce a ground current from a geomagnetic storm.

I read that telluric currents can be induced through the ground when the bedding planes are tilted.. or change in direction (upside down v and v shaped folds in our rock bedding) especially in the orientation of the magnetic north and dipping below the ground surface in that direction. 

That happens a lot near the fissures and fractures across the San Andreas fault, buckling an area to have squished folds that are dehydrated, fractured, still emitting flammable gases, and the areas oriented 60 degrees south of the surface are more prone to these induced geomagnetic currents.

I’m wondering how to protect these prone areas that might be common in metamorphic belts near significant fault lines that get folded into these v shaped formations that induce more current.

Maybe by rerouting them away from these prone zones, but going underground seems like it would face the same problems.

I really appreciate any knowlege regarding our powerline vulnerability in geomagnetic storms due to the geology and water table height outside of just the grid shutting down or internet mostly just due to wildfire potential.

 

Regarding Radio Transmission

I heard some very sad news recently regarding a plane crash that ended 3 lives locally at a uncontrolled airport. 

I’m bringing it here because it seems this tragic incident involved radio communications not working for one of the planes. I noticed there was a radio emmission at that time and wondered how an airport without a communications tower might be more prone to solar flare events with radio emissions impacting the pilots to reliably communicate.

My dad used to fly cessnas and told me different airports use different radio frequencies. But it seems like these small airports use the very high frequency range VHF btw 100Mhz-400 and that seems to overlap with frequency radio emission. I am unfamiliar with ham radio effects during flares in general but have wondered when out sailing and the radio doesn’t work how people rely on a fluctuating frequency for  communication in an emergency if it is their only source.

Are there other frequencies a small airport can access that are less vulnerable to moderate flares if the reliance on communications is that dire for safety reasons?

  I’ve always wondered if pilots know or are told by the airport about potential radio errors that day if it affects the safety of their flight.

I understand we can’t predict flares at all really, maybe if a sunspot is active enough I guess there could be a warning system.

Any thoughts or expertise on this would be much appreciated. I hope the aurora show has been more lovely than a dread for all y’all. 

💥 🐄 🍖 

Blown transformers and Cattle and sugar sounds like a great bbq to me in Florida! Glad they have a backup circuit even if expensive with all the crazy weather they get. Florida must be simply humming on a hot electric day with all those air conditioners!

thanks for entertaining these unfortunate grid related scenarios with some much appreciated humor!

 

 

 

[WildWill]

Bry.

pilots are required to file a flight plan and obtain a weather briefing as well as check NOTAMs - Notice to aviators. Possible communication issues, etc. would be reported in the weather briefing and and localized issues, in a Notice to Aviators.  
 

WnA

[hamateur 1953]

Yes WW but remember you are in Texas!  y’all have something called “ common sense”. A hard to define quality but a real one nonetheless. And smart enough not to interconnect with idiots on hv transmission lines.  

On 8/18/2022 at 2:23 PM, WildWill said:

I am certain they have a plan in case it should go down. That's a very specialized piece of equipment.  Most of the "pipes and wires" utilities have plans in place for the failure of any part of the system.  Right down the street from me is the Centerpoint Energy operations center, sugar land.

They've got a dozen transformers in their lot, outside. Also, keep in mind that most transformers and other equipment is protected by a line fuse. That's why lightning doesn't take out a dozen transformers a day...

I won a project at Westar Energy in Kansas about 15 years ago. The project was an assessment of their "current state" as well as their biggest risks and cost benefit analysis and build a business case for upgrading their work management system, and develop a asset management system for the to become more proactive in maintaining their system.
While this is not true of most utilities, they had equipment out in the field that they didn't even know about until it died - then they would have to search for it... no kidding, ever been to Kansas? It's really big and there ain't much on it 'ceptin' corn...  There are only like 2 gas stations between Topeka and Wichita  - at least that's how it was 15 years ago.

They have transformers out in the middle of nowhere that are 50-70 years old. Of course, if they have any documentation on it, it's really old and hard to find.  They manage their system using the philosophy "ain't broke, don't touch it" and "replace only when dead!". And they really don't have a choice, can't get spare parts or manuals for all this stuff! 
 

At the end of the assessment and business case development, they decided to replace their work management replacement and decided to stick with / replace when broken! Although, they did start documenting everything the repair crew run into.

There are other utilities in that kind of shape, but not that many.  The installed surge protection and breakers are generally able to deal with lightning just fine. Lightning is similar to the charged particle storms (geomagnetic) that light up the polar skies. Just more localized.  Lightning is plasma and millions of degrees!

Mostt equipment is well protected. Even long transmission lines have a number of safeguards in place.

on the transmission side, most of the transmission lines are protected from most damage a CME would cause. 
 

The two biggest issues on the transmission side are congestion overload and arcing!  Arcing is where the line has heated up because of the current/load on it and the line sags (thermal expansion) enough to arc to (the) ground...  which is usually a tree or large bush which is nice and dry!

California imports s lot of electricity from Oregon and Washington state. They have sagging problems every year. It'll cost a boatload of cash (100s only please!) to add another set of transmission lines through Northern California,

 

in Texas, one of the big problems is "congestion" on the transmission lines.  This occurs when the demand and load are not adequately distributed. In other words, the generation is "clumped together " and sharing the same transmission lines, while load is not evenly distributed either.  It a really big deal because even though you may have three paths to "ground" one is much better and the load needs to be redistributed by shutting units out and generating where it'll use another path and reduced the load on the congested path.

congrstion on the transmission lines can make things much worse because the line is already saturated..:  

Load Balancing in Texas last year costed $2.1 B last year. It'll cost mote to fix it all!!

In Amy case, most of the electrical grid is well protected. That's not the real problem. Very little damage would be caused by a significant CME to the electrical grid, permanent fan agent.

The real problem is in systems shutting down because of the storm, breakers popping, plants tripping (going off line ). And you end up with cascade failure.

Once the "Grid" goes down, the real problems begin. If the whole grid came down, it would take weeks to bring it back up.

on an electrical transmission/distribution network, the demand and load must equal. If your load becomes larger than your generation, the frequency goes up - normally it's 50-60Hz depending upon where you live. If you are not generating enough to cover the load, the frequency slows down. You see this as a surge or brown  out.  Both are really bad on everything you plug in...

Even with just  half the grid "up", you can bring more generation and more load, a little at a time until you have everyone back on.

If the "grid" were to come down completely, you have big problems. You have to be able to match load and generation as you bring it up. If ya don't, you are gonna blow out a lot of stuff!  Think about it, the whol grid is down. So to bring it back up, you are going to have to do it a tiny bit at a time until you get enough load/generation going such that the frequency is not so badly affected,...

There are other issued, but blown transformers, etc, are not the issue. The real problem is if the whole thing comes down.

last year, here in Texas, we had an ice storm that lasted a week. They had to shut out all the windmills, because they would freeze up in the cold and freezing rain,..  we get 20% of our electricity from wind. Then we lost a lot of natural gas generation, they came very close to losing the whole grid. People I know said it would take about 3 weeks to bring it back up!

it's not the damage from the storm, but losing the grid that is the real problem.

sorry for being so long winded !'

WnA

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Bry]

On 8/23/2022 at 10:13 AM, WildWill said:

Bry.

pilots are required to file a flight plan and obtain a weather briefing as well as check NOTAMs - Notice to aviators. Possible communication issues, etc. would be reported in the weather briefing and and localized issues, in a Notice to Aviators.  
 

WnA

I was curious after hearing about the recent FAA-NOTAM outage shutting down all US airlines ....if this was partially due to recent solar activity or intense weather augmenting radio frequencies they communicate with.

https://www.npr.org/2023/01/12/1148480971/faa-notam-outage-ground-stop

[WildWill]

14 hours ago, hamateur 1953 said:

Yes WW but remember you are in Texas!  y’all have something called “ common sense”. A hard to define quality but a real one nonetheless. And smart enough not to interconnect with idiots on hv transmission lines.  

 

Round here, we call that "snap"! And if'n you ain't got none, ya don't live long! 😊

[WildWill]

9 hours ago, Bry said:

I was curious after hearing about the recent FAA-NOTAM outage shutting down all US airlines ....if this was partially due to recent solar activity or intense weather augmenting radio frequencies they communicate with.

https://www.npr.org/2023/01/12/1148480971/faa-notam-outage-ground-stop

Hi Bro,

I hope yer having a good day! 
I was a skydiver - I say was because can't jump anymore- both knees, both shoulders and my back have been ruined (not from skydiving - although doing a little over 1000 skydives didn't help me knees much...

I did a number of demo jumps, into high school football stadiums, air shows, etc.

Before making the jump, you are required to file a NOTAM - that way, all the pilots flying through the area that gonna have jumpers on the are....  if you don't file a NOTAM, they call it a bandit jump...  lol. Regardless, everything from skydivers, hot air balloons, anything unusual, requires a NOTAM to be filed 24 hours before the "event". 
 

Skydiving usually operate out fields or small airports. They are marked for aviators. If you jump out more than 5 miles from the DZ requires a NOTAM.

I used to upon up 3 seconds out the door, at 14,500 ft - carving clouds under canopy is just incredible. But I digress. I jumped over the DZ, air traffic called "jumpers out, 15,000 ft, BnB...  well one day, I was at about 11,000 ft and a Southwest Airlines 737 passed so close to me that I could see the pilot and some people in the windows. It was a couple of hundred yards tops! lol.  The pilot has not read all the NOTAMs. The NOTAM system is supposed to prevent things like that.

I gotta say, I had one heck of an adrenaline rush when I got to the ground.  The winds were blowing outta the northeast, which is not "the norm" so they were using a runway that seldom get used.

The system warms aviators of unusual circumstances. It appears that the problem occurred in one of the databases they use to manage all this stuff became corrupted. It happens, although rarely.  The system has become a great deal larger than was ever expected. Part of that is drones.

Depending upon when and where you fly a drone, you may also have to file a NOTAM. Which you can file from a smart phone, with the right software.

I believe that if solar activity was the cause, all lot of other systems would have been affected.

You are very welcome for the dissertation. 😏😎

Hooe this helps understand what the NOTAM does and why it's so important.

Cheers

WmA

PS: I've had 3 encounters with aircraft - the one I mentioned was in Houston (south about 15 -20 miles). At the same DZ, I had a Gulfstream IV pass about 6-7,000 for below me - while o was in free fall. The third was in Dallas where they jump in between flights going onto DFW. I Saw one while under canopy, about a thousand feet above me. I was under my canopy at about 9,000 ft. 
Cheers!

[hamateur 1953]

Florida also is (besides seattle city light) one of the few places using open delta for three phase commercial distribution. Less expensive to maintain limits,  fault current. Plus a higher terminal voltage motors love. However it does have a high leg!! Ignorance of this fact is really entertaining and not in a good way! 

 

Edited January 15, 2023 by hamateur 1953
I byted myself

[Bry]

3 hours ago, WildWill said:

I believe that if solar activity was the cause, all lot of other systems would have been affected

Thanks for sharing the crazy experience sky diving and dealing with death defying unannounced aircraft 3 times! That’s nuts! I appreciate what an exciting and gung-ho life you live in Texas addressing the issues head on with good common sense and attitude. I also see why a north easterly wind is weird and might change what airports are landable.

My housemate lost her partner this year due to a mishap at a local airport while a significant flare happened so that’s why I probably seem overly concerned about the impacts of flares and airplanes. I understand now the FAA NOTAM communication system might have been shut down from a corrupted file but I’m still curious about the effects on radio..

Sure does seem like there is more airline issues going on as of late and I was curious if the radio frequencies used to communicate NOTAMS (122.5Mhz & 243MHz) were impacted at all by recent radioblackouts.

https://pilotworkshop.com/tips/what_to_monitor/

I thought there was an R3 the other day, a proton density spike and brief blackout at the poles and am curious as to which high and low frequencies used by aircraft are affected!

Here are some recent events:

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/01/15/asia/nepal-yeti-airlines-crash-intl-hnk/index.html

https://www.cnn.com/travel/amp/jfk-airport-new-york-close-call-faa/index.html

Also, I’m a lady but find it fraternally endearing to be called a bro! 

 

 

Edited January 15, 2023 by Bry
NOTAM file corruption vs flare?