Is it possible to protect your Solar System against EMP?

[AntronX]

Emp will be all around you, like air. In order to avoid any emp, you need to be in a Faraday box.

Big faraday box will pass emp via surface current excitation that will let some emp frequencies pass through. Placing box within a box within a box is the technique to reduce it. From "Protection of Equipment and Electronic Systems against Electromagnetic Interference, especially NEMP by Dr. Diethard Hansen, February 1987"

 

[Hedges]

Most small devices, including handheld radios, survived simulated EMP. Some radios were damaged. I don't have the details, might be voltage whip antennas vs. current loop.

Automobiles typically stalled. Only one out of many required repair (ECU).

PV system connected to the grid will be at risk. House wiring and PV wiring (which has bigger loops) might be. Individual pieces of equipment, unconnected, unpowered, stored, probably won't be damaged by a distant event. Faraday cage provides additional protection.

There is a huge difference between a prepper in a valley without line of sight, vs. an aircraft or space vehicle that gets a nuke lobbed in its direction. Many more types of ionizing and non-ionizing radiation threat in the latter case, as well as extreme levels.

Aircraft and designed and tested to withstand it. Including ITO on windows to maintain Faraday cage.

 

[MisterSandals]

Placing box within a box within a box is the technique to reduce it.

This was my conclusion as well for spare units. It can be done cheap and easy.

I have a Victron 150/50 and 2000W inverter that I unboxed and wrapped in heavy aluminum foil. I then put the internal packaging on an wrapped that in foil. I then placed it in the outer box and wrapped again. 3 layers. Fingers crossed.

If you label the outside foil, you or someone else will appreciate that effort later.

I am not convinced I will have anything to run on AC like a fridge or freezer…
Maybe a clock and battery charger? Radios, tvs, phones probably useless without services if they happen to survive.

 

[Luk88]

I read a military EMP prep manual once long time ago. It was full of things like "cast steel enclosures for critical equipment need to have at least 12mm (half inch) wall thickness and be equipped with lead seals". I'm not sure what this tells us about the suitability of your typical mesh Faraday cage or aluminium foil, but at the same time if our solar install is half a mile from a small nuke blast, we're likely to have worse problems than EMP protection.

I think there are a lot of things one can do to increase resilience. This will follow the typical resilience curve.
Initially you can make great gains in your system's resilience with very little effort.

Things like surge protectors. For example my current array has no surge protection at the panel end of the main wire. I have 4s4p array, then 25m of underground wire, a surge protection and the inverter. Probably adding surge protection at the panel rack is a very good idea.

But then, what is a "good ground" in terms of surge protection (as good as you can get - I know, I know ). Here the legal requirement for house ground is below 7 ohms I think(it was long time ago I read it). In a clay soil with pockets of sand that is very difficult to get sometimes and to measure it easily you need a very expensive equipment.

I managed to get my solar system ground to about 4ohms,but it took lots of grounding rods. I'd love to find out if there is an easy straightforward method to measure grounding quality without hiring a very expensive meter.

 

[MisterSandals]

I managed to get my solar system ground to about 4ohms,

How does one test/measure that?

 

[Luk88]

How does one test/measure that?

With a very expensive meter.

At the time I hired two young guys who were learning to be electricians at a local technical school to do the wiring in my workshop. Initially it was just to do the wiring. I was going to do everything else myself. And I was going to hire someone to do grounding for both lightning protection and the main building ground. But, they talked to their teacher and he let them borrow their school's meter.

It was something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Sonel-MPI-540-Multifunction-Electrical-Installation/dp/B08K2SFDHN not by sonel, some other brand, it might have been a Fluke. It had ~40m of wire x2 and ground spikes you're supposed to place exactly 40m(if i remember correctly) apart.

There are cheaper meters and various elaborate methods that involve ungrounded gas generators etc I read about online. In the end these two guys resolved my problem and they got a good grade for it at school

 

[robby]

After watching a YT documentary on the Nuclear blasts done in outer space to create EMPs it is even more clear to me that this is never going to happen and if it does life as we know it would be over.
If the 1.4 Megaton Star Fish Prime blast was to occur today it would completely destroy all LEO Satellites in a chain reaction of space debris. It would also make launching new objects into space impossible for probably 50-100 years. Most of our ground based electronic items would be destroyed and we would have to literally reboot most tech industries from scratch. The destruction would of course trigger a full strike by all nuclear armed countries on all perceived threats because the "use it or lose it" rational would come into effect.
If this all sounds cryptic or blown out of proportion then I suggest reading or watching the details of what happened after that Test.
There is a reason the USSR did not even try their own test and all the main countries in the world immediately banned all further nuclear testing in space.

 

[DPC]

Everyone who lives under the illusion that a limited nuclear exchange is something you want to live through should stop and consider where they get information from

If your like me and were raised on a steady diet of nuclear terror you probably already know that an EMP is the least of your worries
An attack is an attach
As command and control break down the number weapons used will only increase to the point where they hole you dig as a bunker is now your grave.

But in the age of climate change a storm shelter depending where you live sounds more and more like a hood idea everyday

Let’s fondly remember the good old days of MAD
here’s one that cost a years sleep back in high school

Who has the patients for a good disaster film anymore since we already just need to watch the news?
But I encourage anyone under the illusion of a limited nuclear exchange to start watching just the middle of threads say… 35 min fir about the next half hour
You will be cured of your imaginary prepper plans to live through to the zombie parts.


Letters from a Dead man
Best of it maybe 45 min in
This is a hard watch because there are no English subtitles
I can pick out a word here and there
Reading the Cyrillic text
You’re not missing much so let me explain scene.
He goes to what remains of the hospital and is search for his grown son a comander at the missile base.
This whole mess started when his son choked on a cup of hot coffee and could not counter a launch order sent in error ( back in the age if the dead hand system some say the Russians still use the dead hand “ mertva ruka “ )
As the father comes frantic he looses his grip on reality now looking for anything amagine his son is still young and sees the screaming burned children.
Notice everyone had a bunker to die in and everyone has basic NBC gear
If your a prepper I bet can can even recognize the гп5 and озк but the flaw in east block civil defence was they actually spent so much time and resources on civil defence without really acknologing that these people would simply die weeks later than their wester counterparts

 

[BarracudaBob]

Emp protection is the same thing as lightning surge suppression but with shielding added. If you're buying a device that says it'll protect you from EMP, but all it's doing is connecting like surge suppressor. Then you've been fooled by the marketing genie.

Now if a device is built from the ground up with ferrite inductor protection on all the inputs, proper shielding surge suppression as a unit that's different.

Bonding, grounding, shielding, and surge suppression devices is all you need.

If you have a better chance of getting hit by lightning directly or indirectly than any EMP.

If you do get hit by an EMP then all the other people that don't have what you have are coming to your house and you have other issues to worry about.

 

[DPC]

Emp protection



Be nice to the gay guy at the gym…
Maybe he can fly a helicopter
Dam EMPs lol

 

[DPC]

One time.....
Some back ground I used to have an EBAY store and I used to sell a lot of this stuff as well as tools vacuum tubes and stuff
Not a man with a rubber suit fetish, but I do not judge this guy lol

So one time I had some stuff that a local theatre company has bought from me for a production of mother courage and her children...
So I dressed up like this and scarred my wife so bad she peed in her pants.
MAN she was mad...
She swore if I ever brought anything like that back into the house again she would cut it up with scissors and me in it lol
This does not offer any radiation protection or EMP protections but I used to sell a minority of this stuff to peppers ( Obama was good for business ).

I'm going to tell you something now...
I live down wind of a large chemical plant and its very serious stuff.
One day I was driving to work and was told we were in a level three.
One of the guys is wearing a full face respirator and rushing us into the building from the car park.
That's very bad!
It means there has been a gas leak and its drifted beyond the limits of the company property.
I was well away from the source and this really scared me.
I live far enough away I never had duct tape and plastic for the windows like the company advised folks around here.
So I called the wife told her and said to make sure the windows were closed and asked where my son was..
As it turns out it was an acid gas leak and not the really bad stuff but that never happened before with the police blocking roads and warnings on the radio ect...
I DO to this day have lots of duct tape and plastic for windows and doors at home and I do have respirators ( not the GP-5 ) and I do have some proper respirator filters ( by 3M )
Somethings people prep for start making a lot of sense after a good scare.
It is something to think about if you live near an oil refinery ( with an Alkylation unit ) or other chemical/ metallurgical facility that has anything seriously dangerous.

At work I have an escape respirator I am mighty glad they now provide us now!


I don't know if these are any good.
I was looking into importing a skid full of these to resell at work before we were issued the self rescuers.
For what it costs if I lived in an apartment building or some other place where fire escape might be my only choice I would probably look at this.
I figure if Chinese buildings are as well made as everything else they probably need these over there and one might ask if its better than nothing.


No EMP shit here maybe the Mylar will protect your brain from the EM lol.
I should not make jokes.
Being scared of stuff is a biological response to to things that may actually kill you.
But I don't need EMP protection or shark repellent and I am probably not going to avoid ionizing radiation from a nuclear exchange ( because some things are not ever going to be avoided )...

 

[Hedges]

How about filters and a blower to maintain positive pressure?

 

[DPC]

In my house?
How about run when you hear an Evac order lol

Added later:
No I should not make that joke.
No matter where you live if you are warned of a Chemical accident you are supposed to INVAC.
You stay in your home close all windows and ventilation and seal it up as tight as you can.
You should be safer in your home than outside trying to run.

 

[OffGridForGood]

Not as serious as your example, but something that shows the effectiveness of a good 3M full face respirator:
A few decades ago when I started my own business I would work endless hours and try to 'get-er-done' working long long hours, I would run a wood furnace to cut back on propane heating to save money, etc. One time during early winter I had this job that needed a lot of plywood panels coated in spray epoxy - like 100 sheets, three coats each yeah I have a full sized spray booth-room and was using a very good organic chemical respirator - but it was early winter and I needed to keep the temperature up in the shop while a huge exhaust fan was blowing out the wall of the spray booth...you guys can already guess what happened - about 2-AM the fan over-took the wood burner and I come out of the spray booth with my mask on to see a shop full of smoke.
But get this, I didn't know it was smoke, becase that respirator was so good I couldn't smell the smoke at all. Took a moment to realize the smoke was pouring into the room from the furnace. Yeah killed the fan and opened up some doors and flipped on the dust extractor - I really trusted that organic full face respirator after that experience, it was plugging up fast in the smoke but I could breathe fine and realized that if you can't smell wood smoke in a room full of it, that has to be a damn good respirator.

 

[DPC]

Another thread blown wildly off course by me

Sorry OP..

Ya a good respirator will filter out odours and in the case of OV filters most of the organic compounds and by products of fire as well as those filters are probably good for particulates.
In the case of smoke you may not smell the combustion products but the CO will still get into your system and can poison you quickly.
Where I work they inject " stench ".... like in natural gas that gives you that rotten egg or cabbage smell.
The theory is you might not get any other warning of a fire underground so they want you to smell that before the smoke and they inject it in the fresh air system.
But a really good 3M or other brand of filter for your respirator will filter that out and you wont smell it before its too late.
Lots of places have rules about who is allowed to wear that sort of PPE so they can be checked on in an emergency.

Amonia is another bad one.
Its easy to smell at low levels and at dangerous levels you may quickly lose the ability to smell and and guys have died not knowing what was killing them....