Your Questions About Solar Generators For Home Use
Nancy asks…
Would a solar storm affect generators or batteries?
A severe solar storm/flare has the potential to damage the National Grid, but what effects, if any, could it have on generators and car batteries?
admin answers:
The solar storms that cause concern in operating the power grid is due to the long transmission lines traversing ground with different impedance along the route of the line. Thus the geomagnetic ground currents induced in the earth which result from a solar storm, move from the earth onto the power grid. These currents are very low frequency between 0 and 4 cycles per second. These currents flow through the power companies transformers and may force them into magnetic saturation and cause voltage distortion and harmonics to show up on the grid.
If the geomagnetic ground currents flow through the power company’s generators, a similar set of problems will occur. If you are talking about a home generator that is isolated from the grid, then no this type of generator will not be affected simply because it does not span a long enough portion of the earth to be affected. As for batteries, it is not likely that any battery system would typically be hooked up in a configuration spanning a great enough distance to see these ground currents either. It would depend on how and what they were hooked up to.
I hope this helps,
Newton1Law
Sharon asks…
Why are radios in my house suddenly making a clicking noise?
Woke up via the radio-alarmclock this morning to a clicking noise. Every radio in the house is doing the same thing, no matter what station they’re tuned to. It’s an extremely distinct clicking sound, with absolutely no semblance of any radio station whatsoever. It sounds like a very fast metronome.
Any ideas of what could be causing this? I was thinking it was some type of solar activity, but haven’t seen anything on the news about it.
admin answers:
When I was a kid, I sometimes heard rapid clicking noises coming from my television when small planes were flying nearby. It turns out that there is a solenoid on certain kinds of engines that give a pulse that can interfere with radios and whatnot.
I bet you have a neighbor running a generator or there is some other source of such interference outside of your home (but not too far away.)
The person causing the problem may not even be aware that he is interfering with your radios.
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