Sun Burned.

Solar storms can shut down power grids, disrupt global communications and knock satellites off course. Companies can protect themselves with loss-prevention measures.

On March 13, 1989, Hydro Quebec, which supplies most of Quebec's electricity, could not stabilize the power surges its distribution grid was receiving, resulting in a nine-hour blackout for 6 million residents throughout the province. At the same time, strong fluctuations occurred in the power-distribution grid in southern Sweden, damaging capacitors and power cables. Also, the English National Grid Co. and Scottish Power plc reported damage to electrical high-voltage transformers.

These events were attributed to violent solar storms that occurred during the sun's most active period in the 11-year solar cycle. As the sun enters another three-year period of intense activity, known as Solar Max, power companies are preparing for major disruptions, and they are urging large power users to do the same.

In addition to interrupting power transmission, disturbances caused by solar activity can disrupt ground-to-ground wireless communications, satellites and spacecraft. On April 6, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warned of potential problems when it reported the first major solar storm of 2000. The agency forecasted that the rate of activity would continue through the next few months, "but the full volley of geomagnetic storms may not occur for another two years or so."

Insurance Coverage

If a solar storm causes physical damage or loss to property, such as a transformer or high-voltage switch-gear, property insurance will cover those losses. There is no point in excluding a "solar storm" peril, because the damage is not directly caused by the solar storm but by its effects on the geomagnetic conditions on Earth and because no direct correlation between the storm and the type of physical damage caused has been established to date.

"Solar storms may present problems that do not involve actual physical loss or damage," said Dan Eudy, executive vice president and chief underwriting officer of Industrial Risk Insurers. "So even though solar storms may not be specifically excluded, the lack of physical loss or damage would preclude a property claim. Awareness of this may focus risk managers' attention on loss-prevention activity."

Solar storms most often affect businesses, as they can cause fluctuations in power supply or blackouts if a utility company's high-voltage transformer overheats or burns out. A cold-storage warehouse might have to throw away perishable items following a power blackout that shuts down the freezers too long. An office building might have to send all its employees home on a hot summer day if a power blackout shuts down the air-conditioning systems. A movie theater would have to cancel all movies during a power blackout, without recovering the interruption of business from insurance.

A standard business-interruption insurance policy would not cover these losses. If the insured purchased an "off-premises power" endorsement, the losses might be covered under certain circumstances, depending on the endorsement's terms and conditions and whether the insured had coverage for the cause of the power failure.

In case of heavy fluctuations in power supply, a steel mill would have to stop its arc furnace until power was stabilized again. In this situation, the power station produces the power, but the solar storm's magnetic effects "eat it up" before it arrives at the steel plant. The interruption would not be covered by property insurance, because the fluctuations didn't cause any property damage or loss to any transformer or switchgear. No physical damage occurs, but the steel mill cannot operate because it has no power. The steel mill can't even claim liability from the power company, because the power company can prove it fulfilled its responsibility by producing the power.

Particle Bombardment

The sun continuously projects particles into space. These streams of particles, called solar winds, are usually a low-density mixture of electrons, protons and helium atom cores, but there are periods of higher activity when the storms are more violent and the flow of particles is denser. The current high-activity period is expected to last through 2002.

The Earth's geomagnetic field, which gives us our familiar compass bearings, also extends thousands of kilometers out into space in a region called the magnetosphere. On the side facing the sun, it forms a protective shield called the bow shock. Stretching millions of kilometers in the opposite direction behind the Earth is the magnetotail. The bow shock deflects most of the particles, but some get trapped in Earth's magnetic currents. These particles end up where the magnetic currents plunge back to Earth--at the North and South poles As the particles strike the atmosphere, they excite the molecules contained in the air and create sky visions such as the aurora borealis, the "northern lights" spectacle visible in Alaska, Canada and Scandinavia.

As solar particles hit Earth and enter the magnetosphere, they create an invisible, circulating flow of charged particles, called the auroral current, around the polar regions of the Earth. The current causes magnetic field fluctuations near the ground, which in turn create unwanted currents in all conductive elements, such as metal pipelines and phone cables. The particles also cause a magnetosphere disturbance, which creates problems in all types of wireless communications.

Influence on Power Transmission

Disturbances caused by solar activity can disrupt complex interconnected power grids, such as the three main grids distributing power across North America. When the Earth's magnetic field captures ionized particles carried by the solar wind, geomagnetically induced currents can flow through the power system, entering and exiting the many grounding points on a transmission network. The currents are produced when shocks resulting from sudden and severe magnetic storms subject portions of the Earth's surface to fluctuations in the planet's normally stable magnetic field. These fluctuations induce electric fields in the Earth and create potential differences in voltage between grounding points, which cause geomagnetically induced currents to flow through transformers, power-system lines and grounding points. Only a few amperes are needed to disrupt transformer operation, but more than 100 amperes have been measured in the grounding connections of transformers in affected areas.

Many portions of the North American power grid are vulnerable to geomagnetic storms. Much of the grid is located in northern latitudes--near the magnetic North Pole--and in regions of igneous rock, which is common over large portions of North America. Igneous rock has a high level of electrical resistance, which encourages geomagnetically induced currents to flow in the power-transmission lines situated above the rock.

Electromagnetic storms occur around the South Pole, too, but there is little land and less infrastructure in that region, so the consequences of a solar storm are limited.

Widespread Losses

Solar storms disrupted power in the United States and Canada in 1940, 1958 and 1972, and they were blamed for an explosion at a 230,000-volt transformer at the British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority. For two days in July 1982, a solar storm prevented electric trains in Sweden from running.

The most widespread disruptions attributed to solar storms took place in March 1989, when the entire province of Quebec went dark, and damage was reported in England, Scotland and France. (See "Power Industry Losses," below.)

Currents flowing in pipelines are known to enhance the rate of corrosion over time, and this can have catastrophic effects. On June 4, 1989, a powerful gas pipeline explosion demolished part of the Trans-Siberian railroad, engulfing two passenger trains in flames and killing 700 passengers. Apparently, the two passing trains ignited gas from a leak in the pipeline. The gas had settled into a valley and had formed a large vapor cloud. The explosion was equivalent to several thousand kilos of TNT. The explosion could not be attributed to the 1989 solar storm, but the previous storms surely contributed to accelerating the corrosion rate of the pipes.

Hardwire telephone cables also are severely affected. In the telegraph age of the 19th and early 20th centuries, telegraph lines operated without batteries when auroras could be seen in the sky. The oldest report dates back to 1859. In the Atlantic cable between Scotland and Newfoundland, voltages of up to 2,600 volts were recorded during the March 1940 magnetic storm. A two-day storm in February 1958 caused severe telephone-service interruptions on Western Union's North Atlantic telegraph cables, and disrupted phone calls transmitted by Bell South's coaxial cable link between Newfoundland and Scotland. On Aug. 4, 1972, a magnetic storm caused the failure of the coaxial cable connecting Plano, Ill., to Cascade, Iowa. Modern-age optical-fiber cables are not subject to solar storms, because they are not made of metal.

Losing Wireless Signals

Wireless communication is based on sending magnetic waves through ether. When the magnetosphere is stable, the receiving antennas get a signal that is almost identical to the one sent. When solar storms disrupt the magnetosphere, the magnetic waves are profoundly disturbed and nothing audible or interpretable is received. The farther the receiving station is from the transmitting one, the worse it sounds.

During a solar storm, it is impossible to send or receive any kind of information with a radio or mobile phone. GB radios, walkie-talkies, mobile phones and beepers will not operate properly. Local radio stations with powerful transmitters and household remote-controlled equipment, such as televisions and garage doors, are not affected because of the short distance between the transmitter and receiver.

Natural Disasters in Space

In space, solar storms can cause static electricity to accumulate on satellites, and they can induce currents in satellite wiring.

In addition, the heat created by the bombardment of solar particles cause surges--or slight increases in volume--in the highest levels of the Earth's atmosphere. Some satellites placed on lower orbits might suffer higher resistance and lose speed. As a result, a satellite could fall to Earth and disintegrate as it passes through the dense atmosphere, or the satellite control station would have to use more fuel to reposition the satellite on its orbit. This could reduce the satellite's life expectancy.

Upon hitting the bow shock--the shield protecting the side of Earth facing the sun--the solar storm pushes the shield inward like a finger pushing into an inflated balloon. This can uncover geostationary satellites, which are normally well within the protective shield of the magnetosphere. These satellites might be swept by solar winds. A long list of satellites are believed to have been damaged by the influences of solar storms and the enhanced particle fluxes they intercept when they are in space. A solar storm was suspected for a 1997 power failure in an AT&T satellite that silenced beepers in North America for several days. (See "Satellite Losses," below.)

Solar storms are like natural disasters. They occur regularly but their intensity and duration can vary in each occurrence. They can be seen "cruising in," but nothing can be done to stop them. Their effects on Earth are geographically limited to regions around the poles. Their effects in space and on Earth are known but unpredictable and can last from a few minutes to a few days, depending on the solar wind's intensity and the type of effect.

Solar storms can be compared to tornadoes. A tornado can flatten one house while leaving its neighbors untouched. Solar storms seem to act the same way on satellites. Although we can see the tornado from a distance, we cannot predict where and what it will hit. A solar storm is invisible and just as unpredictable.

The solar storm itself does not cause physical damage to property, but the electromagnetic, electrostatic and electromotive consequences of the phenomenon can cause property damage and/or business interruption on Earth and in space. The damage is indirect. Unlike the direct relation between fire and losses resulting from it, there is no relation of cause and effect between the damage and the solar storm.

Power companies in North America and northern Europe are developing emergency plans to reduce power production just before a storm hits Earth. They are urging large power users to do the same before disturbances in the power supply occur.

NASA is trying to develop reliable systems for forecasting solar storms and other "space weather" for spacecraft-monitoring agencies and the power-producing industry. In November, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration introduced the first-ever scales to characterize the severity and impact of upcoming solar storms on public safety and services.

Similar projects, like the British geological survey, have been launched in Europe. This forecast would issue warnings so power companies could prepare for surges in their transmission lines and satellite monitors could fold solar panels and "silence" a satellite if it runs the risk of being affected by a solar storm.

Insurers can encourage their clients that are vulnerable to the effects of solar storms to implement loss-prevention measures.

"We talk to our customers and try to educate them on potential risks to their clients regarding solar storms," said Charles Haake, a second vice president for property treaty reinsurance with Employers Reinsurance Corp., Kansas City, Mo. Jean-Francois Spoiden is the loss prevention account manager for the Frankfurt, Germany, office of Industrial Risk Insurers Corp., a member of Employers Reinsurance Corp. He is responsible for coordinating loss prevention in the Properly & Casualty Centre of Excellence of ERC Frankona R[ddot{u}]ckversicherungs-AG, Munich, Germany.

Power Industry Losses Attributed to Solar Storms

March 13, 1989: Hydro Quebec could not stabilize the power surges its grid was receiving and this resulted in several shunts, causing a nine-hour blackout for 6 million Quebec residents. At the same time, strong fluctuations occurred in the power distribution grid in southern Sweden. Damage was caused to capacitors and power cables. The English National Grid Co. and Scottish Power plc reported damage to electrical high-voltage transformers. The English National Grid Co. also experienced large fluctuations in power on high-voltage lines, causing AC power and voltage variations at the user end.

These losses led the English National Grid Co. to monitor geomagnetically induced currents and solar-storm activity more closely. These damages and disturbances were unexpected, because Great Britain was considered too far south to be affected by solar storms. This shows how violent the storm was in 1989.

July 13-14, 1982: The Swedish power-distribution grids experienced interruptions. Transformers and the relay protection devices in power grids tripped. The Swedish train operator could not operate a number of trains with electric locomotives.

Aug. 2, 1972: The Bureau of Reclamation power station in Watertown, S.D., was subject to large swings in powerline voltage of up to 25,000 volts. Similar swings in voltage were reported throughout Wisconsin. A 230,000-volt transformer at the British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority exploded, and Manitoba Hydro in Canada recorded power drops in a matter of a few minutes from 163 to 44 megawatts in the power it was supplying to Minnesota.

Feb. 9-10, 1958: The power transformer failed at the British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority.

March 24, 1940: The power supply in New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Quebec and Ontario was temporarily disrupted.

Satellite Losses Attributed to Solar Storms

Jan. 11, 1997: AT&T experienced a massive power failure in its Telstar 401 satellite. This disabled most beepers in North America for several days. At the same time, the GOES-8 weather satellite experienced difficulties. In the meantime, the plasma from a solar storm had reached the Earth some hours before. It is important to realize, however, that simultaneous events need not be correlated. Despite the dramatic consequences for the Telstar satellite in January 1997, no military satellites were affected by this particular storm, and most other commercial satellites did not encounter unusual problems.

Jan. 20-21, 1994: ANIK E-1 and E-2, two Canadian communications satellites, were disabled at a time when elevated activity of high-energy electrons was measured in the magnetosphere. The Intelsat-K satellite began to wobble and experienced a short outage a few hours before that.

March 13, 1989: GOES-7, a weather satellite, lost half of its solar cells. As a result, the operating life of the satellite was cut in half.

Nov. 26, 1982: GOES-4, a visible and infrared spin-scan radiometer, was disabled for 45 minutes after the arrival of high-energy protons from a solar flare.

February 1982: Marecs-B, a marine navigational satellite, was disabled during a week of intense solar storms.