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Comment by t_s_popik | Hacker News Reader

Please read my 2016 testimony to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on the threat of solar storms:

https://www.resilientsocieties.org/uploads/5/4/0/0/54008795/...

Market these ideas to defense firms that could act as a supplier. A billion dollar program has to be enticing to someone.

I like how you think

OMG. Thanks for this info. I doubt us in the UK are being any smarter. I might question the probabilites as they've been updated since, see my comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23067785 but that gives zero excuse to do nothing.

This should be the top-voted comment, if anyone would care to read it. I's short and pointed.

Edit: this reminds me of Feynman's presentation on the Challenger disaster, only beforehand.

Is there anything an average person can do to help? An organization I can donate to, or something I can bring up to my representatives?

That is a terrifying report...

Thanks for assembling and sharing that report.

Did FERC do anything with it, or was it ignored?

FERC directed the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) to set a reliability standard for solar storms. Under that standard, not a single high voltage transformer in the U.S. electric grid is required under the standard to have hardware protection. Instead, paper studies exempt utilities from taking tangible action. As of May 2020, only one device to block harmful currents from solar storms has been installed in all of the U.S. electric grid. Fairly stated, FERC ignored my testimony and that of other experts.

Thank you for sharing this and I hope someone in government takes action to protect our grid. Based on your findings have you made any personal preparations for an event like this? I lean towards preparedness but know I can be a little over reacting when hearing about these possibilities.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com