The public utility went out of service in the middle of the night. The entire province of Québec went without power for nine hours.
Space weather is the conditions in outer space that are influenced by the sun.
There was a lot of activity on the sun, but there wasn't a lot of detail in the initial story. There's been a lot of work done trying to fill in the gaps as we try to do a hindsight investigation.
At a June 8 meeting of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, Boteler spoke about the 1989 black out.
A solar flare just erupted from the sun, and the video is amazing.
Looking at solar data collected around the world in the week leading up to the blackout, Boteler and colleagues realized there had been not one, but two large coronal mass ejections.
Boteler said that it's not just any old storm. It was the second CME arrival that caused the Hydro-Québec power failure.
The Hydro-Québec blackout is a good example of how solar activity can disrupt life on Earth, and a cautionary tale that we may still not know enough about space weather to predict.
As the sun enters solar cycle 25 in earnest, the story of Hydro-Québec is especially powerful.
Experts gave the impression of a specialized community that was very concerned about the potential impacts of space weather on the electrical grid during the June 8 virtual meeting. They said that there is a need to understand the issue better.
Experts are in the process of designing and deploy instruments to better assess the threat, and they are still navigating the collaborations among research institutions, governmental entities and private industry that will likely be required to tackle an issue with highly technical scientific and engineering problems.
The community has learned a lot since 1989 and there's still more work to be done.
The sun's influence on space weather is strong. The interaction of solar radiation and solar wind with Earth's atmosphere and magnetosphere is included.
Satellites can be knocked out, communications can be disrupted, and electrical grids can be damaged. It's hard to project the extent of damage to power grids in the worst-case scenario. Solar activity is a challenge to monitor and understand, while location-specific factors affect the costs of power loss and infrastructure damage.
Jonathan Eastwood is a researcher at Imperial College London. There are a lot of questions about what is reasonable to spend to defend against space weather, based on what the likely impact is going to be. Before governments, utilities and other stakeholders undertake expensive options, such as retrofitting entire power networks, there is still a lot to be studied.
The European Space Agency is interested in collecting solar data. Eastwood said that the distributed space weather sensor system (D3S) could be formed by a fleet of specialized satellites and that a range of instruments would be sent to stable orbit at Lagrange Point 5.
Panel members said that an advanced warning system could allow power grid operators to prepare for a storm and restore service quickly. Improved data collection, along with models that predict the possibility of a complete or partial grid failure, would be required for such technology.
Improvements in solar data collection have been going on for a long time. There are challenges in funding data collection and encouraging data sharing.
Anna Kelbert said it was a Tower of Babel situation. The problem is complex and spans a lot of disciplines.
Kelbert wants to see data from electric grids shared in real time to allow researchers to compare changes on the grid with their forecast models built on improved solar and geological data. There isn't much incentive for the power grid industry to share their configurations.
The federal government has taken notice of the threat of space weather and the need to understand it. The North American Electric Reliability Corp., a nonprofit that issues standards to power companies, was ordered by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to develop plans to mitigate the effects of a magnetic event.
Bill Murtagh said that this step was a game-changing one. The potential impact of space weather on the electrical grid was recognized by this regulation.
Space weather was on the list of the most concerning possible natural disasters.
There is no guarantee that increased attention will prevent a worst-case scenario in the event of a solar storm.
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