On September 2nd 1859 C.F. Herbert, prospecting for gold
in south-eastern Australia, saw something sublime in the evening sky. “A
scene of almost unspeakable beauty presented itself, lights of every
imaginable colour were issuing from the southern heavens,” he would
later recall. “The rationalist and pantheist saw nature in her most
exquisite robes. The superstitious and the fanatical had dire forebodings, and thought it a foreshadowing of Armageddon and final dissolution".
Those who saw cataclysm in the auroral display were not exactly wrong: just ahead of their time. The Carrington event, as the geomagnetic storm Herbert observed came to be known, was the result of 100 megatonnes of charged particles thrown off by the Sun a few hours earlier slamming into Earth's magnetosphere, a protective magnetic sheath generated by currents in the planet's liquid core. The electromagnetic effects of the onslaught did not just produce a truly spectacular display of the Southern Lights (and the Northern ones, too, visible as far south as Colombia). They induced powerful currents in any electrical conductors to hand. Some telegraph networks took on a life of their own!..
Such effects mattered little at the time light bulb was 20 years inn the future. In today's ubiquitously, fundamentally and increasingly electrified world a "coronal mass ejection" (CME) as large as that of the Carrington event could cause all kinds of chaos. Induced currents would topple electrical grids. Satellites would have their circuitry fried and possibly be dragged by the outer atmosphere bloated by the storm's energy. A slight foretaste of what might come we had in 1989 when Quebec's grid was knocked out by a storm many hundreds times less in severity than the Carrington event.
When the next big one comes is hard to predict but that it will eventually come is beyond the debate. Solar physicists put the odds of a Carrington level geomagnetic storm some time in the next ten years at around one in ten (!)
The most devastating effect of a really large CME would be on the transformers in electrical grids: gigantic, purpose-built machines that step voltage down between the long-range transmission grid and the distribution grid which runs lower-voltage power into homes, businesses and hospitals. Strong enough induced currents will damage those transformers beyond repair. Because it typically takes between six and 12 months to get a replacement transformer made - and only a few countries have the industrial capacity to make them - that could have many grids crippled for a long time. "If you simultaneously lose the ability to pump water, to pump fuel, to communicate and lose eyes in the sky, yu pretty quickly get into territory that's never really been explored before", says Dan Baker, the director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Geomagnetic storms, as devastating as they could be. are only a subset of all events found in the historical and geological record that present plausible threat s of catastrophe. Giant volcanic eruptions, powerful earthquakes, tsunamis and really strong hurricanes are just some examples of others. Frequency and magnitude of disastrous events shows a tendency to increase.
Credit: Swiss Re/Cat Perils and Swiss Re Institute
Everything in our modern world relies on energy, mostly electricity. Just because we came to depend heavily, or rather critically, on the power grids providing energy, any of such events would leave many thousands, potentially millions, of people without energy, water, food and communication for extended period of time, leading to many lives lost and causing huge economic damage. Does it have to be that way? Can it be done differently? Yes, with distributed energy generation.
Clean energy can be produced where is needed, without the need to transmit it across countries and continents. This would minimize the footprint, eliminate huge inefficiencies, dramatically increase reliability and avoid a domino effect of failing power grids.
Moreover, the energy generation and storage system does not have to be permanently attached to one location. Meet the Autonomous Mobile Energy System (AMES) developed by Ascent Systems Technologies.
AMES is a self-contained module that fits into a standard shipping container and can be delivered on demand to any geographical location in the world. Rapidly deployed, it provides an uninterrupted source of clean energy without requiring any fuel supply or connection to the power grid. AMES combines several advanced technologies in one integrated and seamlessly operating system. The brain of the module is Ascent's proprietary configuration and adaptive control software combining model-predictive approach with a novel machine learning technique.
The module will be invaluable in situations such as disaster relief efforts and humanitarian missions. It can also serve remote communities, mining operations, research stations, field hospitals and many other applications providing critical energy security while protecting the environment. Multiple modules deployed in the area or even at different geographical locations are connected via smart network for environment monitoring and continuous performance optimization. Welcome to the future of energy!
