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Is it possible to protect your Solar System against EMP?

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Hauls Assington

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Jun 13, 2022
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Do solar panels survive? Charge controller? Batteries? Inverter?

We are probably doomed by fallout from exploded nuclear power plants anyway in the case of emp, but do we have any EMP experts in the house?
 
www.sol-ark.com

E.M.P.

Sol-Ark® hybrid inverters are EMP-hardened and have built-in EMP protection against severe weather, solar flares, and military-grade weapons. Learn more.
www.sol-ark.com www.sol-ark.com
 
shot428 said:
www.sol-ark.com

E.M.P.

Sol-Ark® hybrid inverters are EMP-hardened and have built-in EMP protection against severe weather, solar flares, and military-grade weapons. Learn more.
www.sol-ark.com www.sol-ark.com
Click to expand...
They also have a webpage about cyberattacks, but it's just grid failure scaremongering... Waters down their other claims to be talking about things that they're clearly not experts on--it's a red flag that they're playing fast and loose with the truth in other areas possibly.

www.sol-ark.com

Cyberattack

Discover the mammoth cyberattack North America is facing and how to defend against it with Investigative journalist Ted Koppel's report - optimizing for cyber security is key!
www.sol-ark.com www.sol-ark.com
 
Lilikoi_Heavy_Industries said:
They also have a webpage about cyberattacks, but it's just grid failure scaremongering... Waters down their other claims to be talking about things that they're clearly not experts on--it's a red flag that they're playing fast and loose with the truth in other areas possibly.

www.sol-ark.com

Cyberattack

Discover the mammoth cyberattack North America is facing and how to defend against it with Investigative journalist Ted Koppel's report - optimizing for cyber security is key!
www.sol-ark.com www.sol-ark.com
Click to expand...

Is the thinking when your servers are in China, you're not worried about a cyber attack on North America? :p
 
sunshine_eggo said:
Is the thinking when your servers are in China, you're not worried about a cyber attack on North America? :p
Click to expand...
That's hilarious. Exactly the kind of blind spots I'm referring to, they don't even need to launch an EMP to brick your inverter if they still control software libraries that downstream vendors use to build your firmware.

A post on software supply chain security and how they implement code signing and who is developing their stack would have been a lot more convincing.
 
Texas-Mark said:
I think people will have more to worry about than whether or not their inverter/charger survives. That said, I am a firm believer in backups/redundancy.
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For the amounts of money most of us are spending, offline spares is the correct answer because it's also going to help you address interruptions caused by other types of hardware failures as long as you're there to install them.
 
A nuclear power plant will not create an EMP. Nuclear plants need water cooling which requires power. A natural or man-made EMP could eventually impact the cooling of commercial nuclear plants. Any explosion would probably be hydrogen gas with potential nuclear fallout in a wide area similar to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
 
That is what I am saying, if there is a huge EMP, the nuclear power plants will eventually all fukushima, and there would be a hideous amout of radiation everywhere. Their cooling systems would fail.
 
Well a EMP attack is similar to a high class solar flare so it depends on the amount of magnetic radiation the best shield is a lead unless you want to construct a Faraday cage and can be smart but hard to do post build.
 
C.M.E. blast would be the most destructive, but easily recovered from with spares in storage.
Depending on how long the blast lasts, seconds to hours to days...
 
Supervstech said:
C.M.E. blast would be the most destructive, but easily recovered from with spares in storage.
Depending on how long the blast lasts, seconds to hours to days...
Click to expand...
We don't have any spares for the big transformers and it takes 2 years to build one.

Also, CME would not be as bad as an EMP. CME only destroys things connected to the grid, whereas an EMP not only destroys things connected to the grid, it will also destroy things that are not connected to the grid.

After a CME, your generator will still work, your car will still work, your laptop will still work, tractors, utility vehicles, and everything else will still work. But an EMP will take out almost everything with a chip. Some cars will survive due to the natural shielding of their computer systems from the vehicle's ignition system, but most other electronics will be fried, connected to the grid or not.
 
Astinus said:
Well a EMP attack is similar to a high class solar flare so it depends on the amount of magnetic radiation the best shield is a lead unless you want to construct a Faraday cage and can be smart but hard to do post build.
Click to expand...
An EMP attack has almost nothing in common with a CME produced from a solar flare. They have about as much in common as a high pressure fire hose and a tsunami. Yes, its still water doing the damage, but they are very different.

The best shield is not lead, not even remotely close. For an EMP attack, the best shielding is silver, but since that stuff is ridiculously expensive, the 2nd best is copper, and not far behind copper is aluminum. That said, none of it is really important as a simple steel enclosure that is properly sealed will do the job.

But lead? What made you come up with that? Lead is used to shield from radiological exposures like x-rays, gamma and neutrons, and even then, the only reason to lead is when physical space is a concern. When it comes to ionizing radiation, every material has what is called a "halving thickness". Having Thickness (HT) is defined as the amount of material needed to cut the radiation in half. A half inch of lead, or an inch of steel, or 2.5 inches of concrete, or even a foot of dense wood, all provide about the same level or gamma attenuation.
 
Hauls Assington said:
Do solar panels survive? Charge controller? Batteries? Inverter?

We are probably doomed by fallout from exploded nuclear power plants anyway in the case of emp, but do we have any EMP experts in the house?
Click to expand...
There has been some testing done with artificial EMP generators that indicate a solar panel that isn't being used should survive, but solar panels that are in use my lose up to 1/2 of their output.

Your charge controller will be toast, your inverter will be toast, but your battery won't care unless it's a lithium battery and has a BMS, in which case, while the battery will probably be fine, the BMS is likely toast.

Nuclear power plants will probably not explode, it is more likely they will melt down. Any explosion will be relatively small and the radioactive elements they spew out will usually be limited to a small geographical area of 30 to 50 miles. Chernobyl was a special case, the Japan reactor is more typical of what would happen.

Unless you live next to a nuclear power plant, your biggest worry will be your neighbor down the street who has 4 hungry young children and no way to feed them.
 
MurhpyGuy has it right.......although the hungry neighbor thing hasn't played out over time. Hungry people don't go from decent people to "Ima kill you for food". For the most part history shows they start walking until they find food or die. Yes expect property crime for a while until they walk along or fall over.
NEMP and CME are as different electronically speaking as you can get.
CME wont affect any of your solar stuff even iff it's on line during the event.
NEMP, well let's hope that's not gonna happen, no good answers unless your goung full groundhog prep.
 
Yeah. But those examples are not from a world where people loot en masse if the power goes out for a few days.
 
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