On December 1, a relatively obvious geomagnetic storm activity caused auroras in Beijing, northern Heilongjiang, Hulunbuir in Inner Mongolia and other places.
Wu Qingwen, a professor at the School of Physics of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, introduced: The solar eruption mainly occurred around November 27, and the sun produced three relatively large mass ejections in the direction facing the earth, and reached the earth around the 30th, resulting in the aurora phenomenon we observed. This magnetic storm is very strong, so it can be ** in Beijing.
What is a geomagnetic storm
A geomagnetic storm is a typical type of solar eruptive activity. When the Sun erupts, coronal mass ejections occur, and a single ejection can throw hundreds of millions of tons of solar material off the surface of the Sun at high speeds of hundreds to thousands of meters per second. These substances not only contain the kinetic energy of the massive mass and velocity, but also carry the powerful magnetic energy of the sun. Once they hit the Earth, they trigger a change in the direction and magnitude of the geomagnetic field, known as a geomagnetic storm.
Geomagnetic storms are graded from low to high on a scale of G1 to G5, and this geomagnetic storm is a G3 level.
G1 geomagnetic storm.
It is a slight geomagnetic disturbance with very limited impact on humans and equipment
G2 geomagnetic storm.
It is a moderate level of geomagnetic interference, which may cause some temporary problems in the power system, navigation equipment and communication system in some high-latitude areas;
G3 geomagnetic storm.
It is a strong geomagnetic interference, which may have a serious impact on navigation, communication, power network and other equipment, causing problems such as power grid paralysis and weather forecast errors
G4 geomagnetic storm.
It is a very strong geomagnetic interference, which will have an extremely serious impact on the world's equipment and networks, and even lead to the paralysis of satellites and flights
G5 geomagnetic storm.
The most severe geomagnetic storm level may lead to catastrophic consequences such as the collapse of the global power grid and the collapse of communication equipment, posing a huge threat to human and social stability.
Geomagnetic stormsWhat is the impact on the power system?
During a strong magnetic storm, the geomagnetic field will undergo violent disturbance changes, and the changing geomagnetic field will produce a ground surface potential (ESP) of a few volts to a dozen volts per kilometer and a duration from a few minutes to a few hours in areas with high soil resistivity. In the high-voltage and ultra-high-voltage transmission systems, the ESP will generate geomagnetically induced currents (GICs) in the circuit composed of east-west and long-distance transmission lines and the earth because the neutral point of the grid transformer is directly grounded. It is easy to cause the half-wave saturation of large transformers and shorten their service life, and in extreme cases, it will burn out and cause permanent damage.
At the same time, because the occurrence of magnetic storms is global synchronization, GIC will saturate hundreds of transformers in the entire power grid at the same time, causing some protection devices to trip and other malfunctions, resulting in a serious drop in the voltage of the power supply system and causing the system to collapse, thus causing large-scale power outages.
Direct Damage:
1. Vibration and audible noise are greatly increased
2. Overheating and loss increase;
3. The absorbed reactive power increases dramatically.
Secondary Damage:
1. Influence on parallel compensation capacitors and static reactive power compensation devices;
2. Make the relay protection device malfunction;
3. Impact on HVDC transmission system.
Historical geomagnetic storms
On March 13, 1989, six million people were without power for nine hours in the Montreal and Quebec areas due to a huge magnetic storm. Power outages have also occurred in parts of the northeastern United States and Sweden.
*From the Internet, photo by Ken Spencer
On July 9, 1990, a geomagnetic storm struck Europe and North America that lasted for several days. The magnetic storm caused a large number of spacecraft and satellite failures, flight delays and cancellations, disruptions to maritime communications, and power failures. The magnetic storm reportedly caused millions of dollars in economic damage.
On March 18, 2003, a geomagnetic storm struck the Earth. The storm lasted for several hours, causing problems such as satellite communications outages, power failures, flight delays and cancellations. The magnetic storm reportedly caused tens of millions of dollars in economic damage.
After the Jiangsu Yangzhun transmission system was put into operation, from March 2001 to October 2002, the transformer of the system Shanghe substation had many unexplained noise anomalies and strong vibration events, and the 750MVA transformer of the station was manufactured by Mitsubishi Corporation of Japan, and it was confirmed that it was caused by DC bias caused by GIC after joint analysis by Japanese and Chinese experts.
In addition, Wanda, the former chief engineer of the Jiangsu Electric Power Research Institute, believes that the noise anomaly and strong vibration incident of the transformer of the Chifeng power plant in Northeast China on March 13, 1989 was also caused by a strong magnetic storm.
Prevention of magnetic storm disasters
In view of the comprehensive disaster of the power system caused by the disaster magnetic storm, it is mainly from two aspects: strengthening the GIC monitoring ability of the power grid and the suppression of the GIC of the power grid.
According to the survey and research, the geomagnetic change in the middle and low latitudes is not strong, so the ground electric field at the site is relatively small, so the GIC is slightly more affected by factors such as transportation circuit distance, electrical parameters and power grid topology structure.
Therefore, if you want to do a good job in the prevention of solar magnetic storms for high-voltage electricity, it is necessaryDuring the planning and design process of the high-voltage power grid, the level of GICs is evaluated in detailFor example, the installation of transformer isolation devices in the design process of high-voltage power grid must be paid attention to, and the GIC tolerance of high-voltage power grid should be improved in a targeted manner, so as to minimize the harm of solar magnetic storms to high-voltage power grids with the least investment.
*: Medium energy test.
The impact of geomagnetic storms on human society is enormous. Therefore, scientists have been studying the causes and methods of geomagnetic storms in order to better prevent and respond to the disasters they may bring.