Alice Wallner & Andrew Dimmock (IRF Uppsala): Magnetospheric driving of geomagnetically induced currents in the Swedish power grid (Introduction seminar)

Thursday 9 Jan 2025, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/Stockholm

101162Å

Title: Magnetospheric driving of geomagnetically induced currents in the Swedish power grid
Speaker: Alice Wallner & Andrew Dimmock
Affiliation: IRF Uppsala
Time: Thursday 9 January 2023, 1400 to 1500
Location: 101162Å

Zoom: https://uu-se.zoom.us/j/61097109417
 

Abstract:

Geomagnetically Induced Currents (GICs) are unwanted currents that flow in ground-based infrastructure such as pipelines, railways, and power grids. Depending on various factors, GICs cause disruptions or even loss in the desired functions of these systems. They are one of many impacts due to space weather, which refers to the conditions on the Sun, interplanetary space, and near-Earth space that affect human activities. A strong type of solar event that causes GICs is interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs), large amounts of plasma ejected into interplanetary space that are sometimes Earth-directed. When an ICME reaches Earth, many complex coupling processes cause electrical currents in the ionosphere to be dramatically enhanced, resulting in rapid variations of the geomagnetic field measured at ground level. Since the ground is conductive, this results in geomagnetic induction, and a geoelectric field is set up. The geoelectric field is aligned with sections of a conductive system that are critical to GICs.

This seminar presents the scope and early results from a PhD project within the field of GICs, which aims to understand the driving mechanisms of how GICs affect the Swedish grid. The project utilizes collaborations with the Swedish Power Grid (SvK), the Swedish Defence Research Institute (FOI), and the Swedish Contingency Agency (MSB) to be able to analyze GICs mainly in Sweden and their impacts. The first project within the PhD is about the geomagnetic storms on May 10th, 2024, which caused a trip in a connecting line between Sweden and Poland. Upcoming projects include identifying which powerlines are most susceptible to GICs, conducting a statistical study of probabilistic threshold values for the voltages required to cause GICs in certain power lines, and analyzing the internal dynamics of the magnetosphere during strong GICs.