> it's a very hypothetical black swan type situation. I don't think it's a sensible use of resources to prepare for a badly understood phenomenon with uncertain probability.
That really depends on how much you'd need to spend I think to prep.
There was a US commission evaluating the threat of an EMP attack (http://www.empcommission.org/docs/empc_exec_rpt.pdf) which seems to suggest that radiation-hardening transformers for such an event would also seem likely to protect them from failing due to geomagnetic storms.
The additional cost for radiation hardening:
> New units can be EMP-hardened for a very small fraction of the cost of the non-hardened item, e.g., 1% to 3% of cost, if hardening is done at the time the unit is designed and manufactured. In contrast, retrofitting existing functional components is potentially an order of magnitude more expensive and shouldbe done only for critical system units.
For that sort of overhead I think that it's justifiable to require it of new transformers at least.
That really depends on how much you'd need to spend I think to prep.
There was a US commission evaluating the threat of an EMP attack (http://www.empcommission.org/docs/empc_exec_rpt.pdf) which seems to suggest that radiation-hardening transformers for such an event would also seem likely to protect them from failing due to geomagnetic storms.
The additional cost for radiation hardening:
> New units can be EMP-hardened for a very small fraction of the cost of the non-hardened item, e.g., 1% to 3% of cost, if hardening is done at the time the unit is designed and manufactured. In contrast, retrofitting existing functional components is potentially an order of magnitude more expensive and shouldbe done only for critical system units.
For that sort of overhead I think that it's justifiable to require it of new transformers at least.