The recent solar storms brought pretty lights to the night sky in some parts of the country, but they can also bring challenges to the power grid. For Bloomberg, Hayley Warren, Denise Lu, and Naureen Malik look at the surges through the lens of data collected by Whisker Labs Inc.
While no significant failures were reported, there is potential for these surges to cause major damage. The last time a storm this strong struck Earth, there were power outages in Sweden and damaged transformers in South Africa, according to the US Space Weather Prediction Center. Strong solar storms can also affect radio signals, global navigation systems, satellites and even pipelines. SpaceX’s Starlink unit said on its website that it experienced “degraded service” that its team was investigating.
