A powerful solar eruption is expected to reach Earth between 03:00 and 12:00 on Sunday, bringing a geomagnetic storm that could interfere with satellites, aviation radio and electricity transmission. Turkey’s National Transmission Authority says it may impose rolling cuts lasting up to 90 minutes in 11 provinces if grid equipment comes under strain.
The public warning appeared on Saturday after a Konya administrative court ordered the authority to give customers at least six hours’ notice of planned power cuts. The ruling awarded 8.4 million Turkish lira (about €168,000) to 39 greenhouse growers who said unannounced interruptions during a 2024 solar storm damaged irrigation controls.
The new storm follows an X9.1-class flare recorded late on Friday by the Anatolian Solar Monitoring Centre. Its researchers estimate that the accompanying cloud of charged particles is moving at about 2,300 km/s (1,430 miles per second), fast enough to reach Earth within roughly a day.
A narrow window to prepare
The authority’s notice says its contingency plan could temporarily disconnect up to 3.2 gigawatts of demand, roughly 14% of evening peak use. A grid simulation by the Izmir Institute for Energy Systems found that, in a severe scenario, faults at two major substations could leave as many as 1.1 million homes without electricity for up to 12 hours.
The operator said those figures describe a precaution, not a forecast, and that the national grid remains stable. “There is no reason for households to expect a blackout,” said Oto Kučera, its deputy director. “We have reserves, backup control rooms and a plan to protect essential services.”
The storm’s direction is still uncertain, but the consequences of getting the worst case wrong are not theoretical.
Lovre Dragić, solar physicist
Dragić said the crucial unknown is the magnetic field carried by the solar cloud. If it points south for several hours, it can couple strongly with Earth’s magnetic field and drive currents through long power lines; that orientation cannot be measured reliably until the cloud is close to the planet.
Satellites and flights on alert
The centre rates a severe G4 storm as likely and says a G5 event cannot be ruled out. Dragić said Turkey’s mid-latitude position makes the most extreme grid effects less likely than in northern Europe, but does not remove the danger to transformers, satellite navigation or radio links.
Aviation officials are preparing advisories for flights using high-latitude routes between Europe and North America, where radio disruption can complicate communication with air-traffic controllers. Anees Kaul, an aviation safety researcher, said diversions could add 30 to 70 minutes to some journeys if the strongest warnings are issued.
The court case has given the public an unusually early view of the utility’s response, but it has not settled the argument over the threat. The monitoring centre says it will update its forecast as measurements arrive; the authority has asked customers to charge essential devices and follow local outage notices rather than rely on social-media predictions.
