RHEATECH Ltd is leading development of a web application modelling the impact of severe space weather on power grids across Europe.
The ‘EuroGIC’ project for the European Space Agency will enable electricity grid operators to assess the risk to their transformers and, ultimately, avoid blackouts.
Space weather experts at RHEATECH Ltd have recently commenced an important project for the European Space Agency (ESA) to advance Europe’s resilience to space weather. In the 2-year project, RHEA will lead an international consortium to develop EuroGIC, a web application for electricity transmission operators that will model geomagnetically induced currents (GIC) in power grids across Europe, providing information to users in near-real time.
The Sun’s activity manifests itself as solar flares, radiation storms and coronal mass ejections. When these are directed at Earth, they drive geomagnetic storms that can cause a range of impacts of varying severity, depending on location, including disruption to terrestrial, maritime and space systems. Geomagnetic storms are rapid changes in the Earth’s magnetic field that generate strong currents in long and conductive infrastructures such as powerlines and railway tracks.