Abstract
Nowadays, when the global and national industry is addicted from various electrical and electronic equipment at a very high level, it is of a special interest to understand the possible origins of the interruptions in the electricity supply. Failures in ground-based electrical and electronic systems, or disturbances of satellites operation caused by influential magnetic storms initiated by the changeable Sun can have a high economic impact on the industry. These strong magnetic storms are triggered by solar-driven disturbances in interplanetary space. Studies of these phenomena have gained a special attention since the incident that had occurred in northern Canada in March 1989. During this event the work of the hydroelectric plant in the region of Quebec was blocked for long, winter hours and many citizens of this region of Canada suffered from a blackout. Analysis performed in the Oak Ridge National Laboratory showed that if that blackout have had taken place in the USA then costs generated only by a not supplied electricity could even reach 6 billion USD.In our paper, we apply time series and statistical analysis tools, i.e. superposed epoch analysis and Wilcoxon Matched Pairs Test, for a large set of data, among them: 4625 failures of electrical grids in southern Poland in 2010, from the total number of 25,616, and 10,656 in the first seven months of 2014, from the total number of 30,155. We investigate only those failures which might be connected with the above described effects. We analyze data of breakdowns with unidentified reasons, as well as failures connected to the aging and electronic devices breakdowns, which occurred during the periods of an increased geomagnetic activity. Based on the data from The Institute of Meteorology and Water Management-National Research Institute we eliminate from the consideration those failures which had meteorological grounds. Our analysis shows the usefulness of these mathematical tools in such a vital for the global and national industry issue, as well, that powerful phenomena of solar origin, somewhat disturbed in 2010 and January–July 2014 the electrical grids productivity in southern Poland.
Highlights
Since the geomagnetic storms start from Kp = 5, we choose for further analysis only those days, and, based on the results presented in Sect. 4.1, the day after
Comparing the total number of electrical grids failures near the solar minimum (2010) and around the solar maximum (January–July 2014) the quantity of failures is twice greater during the first seven months of 2014 than in 2010. It can be treated as an indicator of solar cycle phase dependence
The rapid growth in the superposed averaged number of electrical grids failures occurs on the day of storms commencement (SSC), as well as around zero-day or the day after when the geomagnetic Kp index was greater or equal 5
Summary
The 22-year solar magnetic cycle is associated with the reversal of the Sun’s global magnetic field in the maximum epoch of SA. At the maximum epochs (a period with a peak in the sunspot number), the polarity of the Sun’s global magnetic field reverses, so that the North magnetic pole becomes the South and vice versa. The 22-year solar magnetic cycle consists of two different polarity periods (from one maximum to another maximum epoch of SA), each lasting 11 years. When the global magnetic field lines are directed outward from the northern hemisphere of the Sun and are directed backward to southern hemisphere, this 11 year part of the 22-year solar magnetic cycle called the positive (A > 0) magnetic polarity epoch, while in vice versa case, it is called the negative (A < 0) magnetic polarity epoch [1]
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