The government response to the Royal Academy of Engineering report on space weather shows remarkable complacency. The RAE: Since the last peak of the solar cy

The government response to the Royal Academy of Engineering report on space weather shows remarkable complacency. The RAE: Since the last peak of the solar cycle, the Great Britain transmission system has developed to become more meshed and more heavily loaded. It now has a greater dependence on reactive compensation equipment such as static variable compensators and mechanically switched capacitors for ensuring robust voltage control. Thus there is increased probability of severe geomagnetic storms affecting transmission equipment critical to robust operation of the system. The greatest effects of GICs are normally experienced at the periphery of the transmission systems, as in Figure 9. The UK government response: Some UK systems are more resilient and robust to space weather than counterparts abroad:  the GB power grid network is highly meshed and has a great deal of built in redundancy. This potentially makes it less susceptible to space weather effects than power grids in some other countries.