Sunday, September 15, 2013

Superbowl 2012 Power Outage Caused by Solar Activity

Anyone who watched the Superbowl in New Orleans in 2013 between the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers knows that at one point during the game half the lights in the stadium went out causing a 34 minute long delay in the game. While ESPN reports there were concerns with the electrical system in the month leading up to the game, and spent nearly $600,000 to improve the electrical feeder system, no one really knows why there was a problem, even though they traced it back to a particular device. A spike in the electrical system could have tripped it, but no meters recorded a spike during that time. I maybe the only person in the world who has noticed that there was also sunspot activity on the day of the Superbowl. On February 3rd and 4th there was an earth facing solar storm. It is well known that solar storms can affect electrical systems. I recall how on that day, I got an alert from spaceweather.com warning me about the solar storm (I am subscribed to such alerts). Also, there was a short time just before the game started that our satellite television service went out, quite possible also caused by the solar storm. Then came the stadium outage during the game.

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