WHO WE ARE
Chess is a national science foundation convergence accelerator project that is progressing societal resilience to space weather.
Chess is focused on one of the most important and immediate impacts of space weather disturbances: disruptive and potentially catastrophic induced currents in the electric power grid known as geomagnetically induced currents (gics) ​
We serve
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Bulk power system operators, planners, and designers
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Power system decision makers; and
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Space weather researchers
Find out how CHESS will help you below!
WHO DOES CHESS SERVE?
BULK POWER SYSTEM OPERATORS
Bulk power system operators, planners, and designers who need information about the space weather conditions aligned with their data on the power grid
POWER SYSTEM DECISION MAKERS
Power system decision makers who require more comprehensive and connected information to guide policy, regulations, and real-time decisions
SPACE WEATHER RESEARCHERS
Space weather researchers attempting to predict geomagnetic disturbances through better attribution of space weather cause and power grid disturbance effect
THERE IS WEATHER IN SPACE?
Just like the weather on earth, the space environment is subject to weather- this weather is driven by changes in the energy coming from the sun, and we call it space weather.
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The sun emits a continuous stream of plasma called the solar wind, and periodically releases billions of tons of matter in an explosion of energy called coronal mass ejections. When directed towards earth, these clouds cause large magnetic storms in the space environment and produce potentially catastrophic harm to our technological systems.
See a TEDx talk by chess principal investigator, Ryan McGranaghan.
POTENTIAL CATASTROPHIC EFFECTS ON 21ST CENTURY LIFE
DISRUPTIONS TO SPACE ENVIRONMENT
SOLAR ENERGY
WHERE DOES CHESS COME IN?
Three barriers hold back a space weather understanding commensurate with society's needs
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The lack of a cohesive community, owing to the wide variety of subject matter experts required;
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The lack of effective data sharing, coordination, and analysis (eg, data science) to leverage existing resources and knowledge efficiently; and
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The diversity of physically dominant processes in each section of the space weather environment, making it difficult to relate various models and observations
We will address the root cause of these barriers, namely that large volumes of data can often be found in communities that are disconnected from each other, yet study the effects of essentially the same phenomena we will focus on one of the most severe areas threatened and impacted by space weather. The electric power grid we will create a cohesive, inclusive, cross-cutting, digitally-empowered community for a flourishing electric power grid by developing next-generation data technologies that can be used by each layer in the ‘geomagnetic disturbance (gmd) information flow pipeline’ for space weather impact on the power grid.
INFORMATION FLOW FOR GEOMAGNETIC DISTURBANCES
WHAT DOES CHESS PROVIDE?
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Tools that make sense of the diverse data together
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Insight-generation
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Increased time to make decisions
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Data technologies for a more informed community and, ultimately, a resilient power grid
WHAT CHESS IS NOT…
A replacement for the excellent foundation of resources, services, and communication provided by the national oceanic and atmospheric administration (noaa) space weather prediction center (swpc), the north american electric reliability corporation (nerc), the federal energy regulatory commission (ferc), or any of the utilities across north america- rather, we serve each link in the gic information flow and our goal is to facilitate the flow, discovery, and use of the diverse data needed to address the geomagnetic disturbances
