IEEE Power Engineering Society

The authors review solar phenomena and describe auroral effects arising from solar disturbances. They discuss geomagnetically induced currents (GICs) that arise as a result of magnetic-field transients due to solar activity. The authors point out that understanding GICs is particularly important since solar activity is rapidly increasing to a peak forecast to be in 1990 followed by several years of generally high sunspot levels. They discuss GIC impact on systems and equipment, GICs in power transformers, equipment and system vulnerability, and modeling and simulation results.<>