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Schedule including this lecture.
Goddard Space Flight Center Engineering Colloquium
Date: Monday, April 17, 2000
Geomagnetic disturbances (i.e. space storms) can impact the operational reliability of transmission systems. Solar Cycle 22 (the most recent solar cycle extending from 1986-1996) demonstrated to the power industry the need to take into consideration the potential impacts of geomagnetic storms. Experience gained from the unprecedented scale of these recent storm events provides compelling evidence of a general increase in electric power system susceptibility. Important infrastructure advances have recently been put in place that provide solar wind data, the most important being the real-time data from the NASA ACE Satellite. This new data source along with numeric model advances allows the capability for predictive forecasts of severe storm conditions, which can be used by impacted power system operators to better prepare for and manage storm impacts
John G. Kappenman is a 1976 graduate in Electrical Engineering from South Dakota State University, after graduation he joined Minnesota Power. In 1998 he joined Metatech Corporation and is the Manager of their Applied Power Solutions Division. His research work has focused on the ways in which lightning and geomagnetic storms disrupt electric power systems and on ways to lessen those disruptions. He holds several US Patents. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE and the Power Engineering Society, and is the Past Chairman of the Transmission and Distribution Committee. He currently teaches at the University of Minnesota-Duluth in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He has published over 30 papers in a variety of subject areas. He is a recipient of the IEEE Walter Fee Outstanding Young Engineer Award, the IEEE Prize Paper Award, the Westinghouse Nikola Tesla Award and two EPRI Innovator Awards. Mr. Kappenman is helping organize and will lecture at the NATO Advanced Science Institute on Space Storms and Space Weather Hazards, to be held in June 2000.
Colloquium Committee Sponsor: Brent Warner
Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov