Earth survived near-miss from 2012 solar storm: NASA

[defacto7]

Down memory lane...

I remember this and the satellite monitor sites went dark for a period of time. I think they were trying to decide whether the picture should be shown at that moment.

Back in 2012, the Sun erupted with a powerful solar storm that just missed the Earth but was big enough to "knock modern civilization back to the 18th century," NASA said.

The extreme space weather that tore through Earth's orbit on July 23, 2012, was the most powerful in 150 years, according to a statement posted on the US space agency website Wednesday.

However, few Earthlings had any idea what was going on.

http://phys.org/news/2014-07-earth-survived-near-miss-solar-storm.html

[JDPriestly]

1. I'm going to ask a very stupid quesiton. Forgive me.

How would this affect people who use solar power? Would the solar storm affect their power source?

[Possumpoint]

2. From What I've Read

The controllers could be affected if they contain any computers or chips. It is advisable to keep spare parts in a Faraday Cage.

[JDPriestly]

5. Thanks. I understand it now.

[defacto7]

3. Commonly used solar cells

would not be affected by such an event directly but as possumpoint mentioned anything computer related would be vulnerable... with major caveats.

But lets put this in perspective. We are talking about flairs classed as MEGA flairs. If there was a mega flair directed at earth, the affected part of the earth would be the side pointing into the flair. The area of the earth not pointed toward the flair would only have a residual (secondary) effect. On the side pointed toward the flair all unprotected satellites would be fried. Once the electrical charge reached the surface it would be picked up by just about everything and a surge would take out anything vulnerable. Most vulnerable would be computer systems and electronic components.

In 1856 we had one of these mega flairs hit earth but the only electrical systems were telegraph communications. There is documentation of telegraph offices bursting into flames and telegraph operators being blown off their chairs. Now that's very simple electronics. Basically a wire on a poll going between electrical coils and connectors, really heavy simple wiring. If that stuff could be melted and burned, just imagine what it would do to the fine skimpy electrical components we have now.

So to answer your question, no, it would do nothing to the solar cells directly, but the components that connect to it could fizz out easily. If the main protective diodes on the solar controller were burnt out which usually means in the open position, there would be uncontrolled amps pushing into your cells backwards and that would burn up the cells and the wires connected to them. For this reason I use big 600V 10amp diodes on each solar panel. That would not likely protect the unit from a direct hit with an unknown amount of power, but in lesser events it would save my cells and wiring. Under normal conditions 10ams is way over the top but better to be overprotected.

Also like possumpoint mentioned you can protect systems from such direct radiation but it would be almost impossible to protect the many components, CPUs and other computer related items spread throughout a normal home.

To make a long story longer, it just depends on the event and how much energy hits what and where, or where it gets transmitted from along the lines.

[JDPriestly]

4. Thank you for such a clear exxplanation.