Scientists: Solar Wind Waves Could Damage Power Grids on Earth

Astronomers from the United States have discovered that waves striking the structure of the solar wind can collide with the Earth's magnetosphere, and can generate bright aurorae and even powerful electric currents.

According to the researchers, electric currents generated by solar wind waves hitting the Earth's magnetic field can damage electrical grids on the Earth's surface. Depending on the angle of impact and the position of the North Magnetic Pole, the intensity of these induced electric currents can exceed 20 amps.

“As a rule, such power grid disruptions occur during strong geomagnetic storms, such as the one in March 1989 in Canada,” says Danny Oliveira, a researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “It turns out that even weaker shock waves, which occur more often, can pose a serious threat to electrical grids.”

The researchers came to this conclusion after studying how different space weather phenomena affect the condition of a gas pipeline in southern Finland, a large part of which lies within the region where the aurora occurs. This allows it to be used as a scientific tool to monitor electrical currents generated on the Earth's surface under the influence of "space weather".

Based on similar scenarios, the experts studied how the electrical characteristics of the gas pipeline changed during the years 1995-2023. They compared the results with various “space weather” phenomena recorded by the Wind and ACE probes in the immediate vicinity of the Earth’s North Pole during very bright aurora borealis.

The researchers discovered from their analysis of 300 cases that some of them caused very strong electric currents in the gas line, which were caused by the collision of the solar wind waves with the Earth's magnetosphere. The intensity of these currents changed according to the angle of the collision and the position of the Earth's north magnetic pole relative to the sun.