In the coming months, power generators and others that affect the reliability of the BES will be required to monitor for, and protect against, Electromagnetic Pulses (EMP's) and Solar Storm activity. This page is designed to help you protect against as well as monitor for these events since this is such a new concept and there are only a handful of people in the country that know how to perform the required tasks for achieving compliance. Abidance Consulting staff have worked with various Government entities to not only monitor for events such as these, but have created programs for them to assist the American business sector. Your feedback and suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Proposed Federal Regulation
Monitor Solar Activity - 3-Day Forcast
What Is An EMP?
Electromagnetic weapons are a type of directed energy weapons which use electromagnetic radiation to deliver heat, mechanical, or electrical energy to a target to cause pain or permanent damage. They can be used against humans, electronic equipment, and military targets generally, depending on the technology.
When used against equipment, directed electromagnetic energy weapons can operate similarly to omnidirectional electromagnetic pulse (EMP) devices, by inducing destructive voltage within electronic wiring. The difference is that they are directional and can be focused on a specific target using a parabolic reflector. Faraday cages may be used to provide protection from most directed and undirected EMP effects.
Protect Against An EMP With A Faraday Cage
A Faraday cage is a metallic enclosure that prevents the entry or escape of an electromagnetic field (EM field). An ideal Faraday cage consists of an unbroken, perfectly conducting shell. This ideal cannot be achieved in practice, but can be approached by using fine-mesh copper screening. For best performance, the cage should be directly connected to an earth ground.
A very effective, but more extreme, way to do this would be to secure the building itself by making it act as a Faraday cage, shielding the radio frequency waves used by Wi-Fi.
Making a large building into a Faraday cage involves encasing the building in a thin layer of conductive material or metal mesh. In physics, a Faraday cage or Faraday shield - named for the British physicist Michael Faraday, who discovered the phenomenon in the 19th century and built the first iteration in 1836 - is an ingenious application of Gauss' law.
Gauss' Law establishes the relation between electric flux flowing out of a closed surface and the electrical charge enclosed inside the surface. Basically, in a hollow object that can conduct electricity, such as an aluminum sphere, charge will (ideally) distribute itself evenly over the surface of the sphere, and there won't be an electric field inside the sphere. This has the effect of blocking EMFs (elecromagnetic fields) and shielding radio frequency waves.
For more information, please contact James Holler at james.holler@abidanceconsulting.com