What effect would an EMP have on solar panels?

Whatever your take on our impending doom, fear of the indirect effects of a nuclear attack has led more than one of our readers to ask whether and how solar panels might survive. Good question! read more

EMP is more a thing of science fiction than science reality. Much of what is known about actual EMP bursts comes from solar flares (coronal mass ejections, in particular) and thermonuclear detonations in the upper atmosphere and outer space. read more

There are differences in effect and magnitude between nuclear high-altitude EMP (NHEMP, or EMP caused by a nuclear weapon detonated high above the earth), geomagnetically induced EMP (GIEMP or EMP caused by solar weather), and nuclear low-altitude EMP (NLEMP or EMP from a nuclear weapon detonated near the ground). read more

Posted on June 6, 2011 by admin My house runs completely on solar panels and I’ve heard that an EMP weapon “Electro Magnetic pulse” would fry them making them useless. read more

Solar panels are fairly vulnerable to an EMP, due to their low individual operating voltages. There’s no good way around it, since there aren’t any hardened solar panels available to the civilian market (and very few to the military) and a Faraday Cage would block sunlight from reaching the panels. read more