Deep learning technique enhances lightning risk prediction for power grids
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Lightning risk prediction technology for power grids
view moreCredit: the Laboratory of Lightning Monitoring and Protection Technology of State Grid Corporation of China
Lightning is one of the primary causes of transmission line trips, posing a significant threat to the safety of power grids. However, due to the complexity and sporadic nature of lightning, achieving accurate forecasts has always been a challenge.
Recently, researchers at the China National Energy Key Laboratory of Lightning Disaster Detection, Early Warning and Safety Protection，as well as the Laboratory of Lightning Monitoring and Protection Technology of State Grid Corporation of China, have made significant breakthroughs in lightning prediction. By developing a deep learning–based nowcasting model, they can effectively predict the location and frequency trends of organized thunderstorms, providing robust support for predicting lightning risks to power grids. This research has been published in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters.
The research team utilized wide-area lightning monitoring data from the State Grid Corporation of China and geostationary satellite imagery, combined with Convolutional Gated Recurrent Unit (Conv-GRU) networks and attention mechanism modules, to develop the lightning nowcasting model.
“Our model not only accurately predicts where lightning will occur, but also forecasts its frequency. It has shown excellent performance in predicting a winter thunderstorm in Central China and a spring tornadic thunderstorm in South China,” says Dr Fengquan Li, the first author of the paper.
Dr Jian Li, the academic leader of the laboratory, points out that, “In the future, we plan to enhance the accuracy of our lightning prediction model by integrating more data sources related to lightning formation, and further optimizing the model framework. This will better support the prediction of, and protection against, lightning disasters affecting power grids.”
Journal
Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters
‘Microlightning’ in water droplets may have sparked life on Earth
Stanford University
Life may not have begun with a dramatic lightning strike into the ocean but from many smaller “microlightning” exchanges among water droplets from crashing waterfalls or breaking waves.
New research from Stanford University shows that water sprayed into a mixture of gases thought to be present in Earth’s early atmosphere can lead to the formation of organic molecules with carbon-nitrogen bonds, including uracil, one of the components of DNA and RNA.
The study, published in the journal Science Advances, adds evidence – and a new angle – to the much-disputed Miller-Urey hypothesis, which argues that life on the planet started from a lightning strike. That theory is based on a 1952 experiment showing that organic compounds could form with application of electricity to a mixture of water and inorganic gases.
In the current study, the researchers found that water spray, which produces small electrical charges, could do that work all by itself, no added electricity necessary.
“Microelectric discharges between oppositely charged water microdroplets make all the organic molecules observed previously in the Miller-Urey experiment, and we propose that this is a new mechanism for the prebiotic synthesis of molecules that constitute the building blocks of life,” said senior author Richard Zare, the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor of Natural Science and professor of chemistry in Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences.
Microlightning’s power and potential
For a couple billion years after its formation, Earth is believed to have had a swirl of chemicals but almost no organic molecules with carbon-nitrogen bonds, which are essential for proteins, enzymes, nucleic acids, chlorophyll, and other compounds that make up living things today.
How these biological components came about has long puzzled scientists, and the Miller-Urey experiment provided one possible explanation: that lightning striking into the ocean and interacting with early planet gases like methane, ammonia, and hydrogen could create these organic molecules. Critics of that theory have pointed out that lightning is too infrequent and the ocean too large and dispersed for this to be a realistic cause.
Zare, along with postdoctoral scholars Yifan Meng and Yu Xia, and graduate student Jinheng Xu, propose another possibility with this research. The team first investigated how droplets of water developed different charges when divided by a spray or splash. They found that larger droplets often carried positive charges, while smaller ones were negative. When the oppositely charged droplets came close to each other, sparks jumped between them. Zare calls this “microlightning,” since the process is related to the way energy is built up and discharged as lightning in clouds. The researchers used high-speed cameras to document the flashes of light, which are hard to detect with the human eye.
Even though the tiny flashes of microlightning may be hard to see, they still carry a lot of energy. The researchers demonstrated that power by sending sprays of room temperature water into a gas mixture containing nitrogen, methane, carbon dioxide, and ammonia gases, which are all thought to be present on early Earth. This resulted in the formation of organic molecules with carbon-nitrogen bonds including hydrogen cyanide, the amino acid glycine, and uracil.
The researchers argue that these findings indicate that it was not necessarily lightning strikes, but the tiny sparks made by crashing waves or waterfalls that jump-started life on this planet.
“On early Earth, there were water sprays all over the place – into crevices or against rocks, and they can accumulate and create this chemical reaction,” Zare said. “I think this overcomes many of the problems people have with the Miller-Urey hypothesis.”
Zare’s research team focuses on investigating the potential power of small bits of water, including how water vapor may help produce ammonia, a key ingredient in fertilizer, and how water droplets spontaneously produce hydrogen peroxide.
“We usually think of water as so benign, but when it’s divided in the form of little droplets, water is highly reactive,” he said.
Acknowledgements
Zare is also a member of Stanford Bio-X, the Cardiovascular Institute, Stanford Cancer Institute, and the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute as well as an affiliate of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.
This research received support from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
Journal
Science Advances
Article Title
Spraying of Water Microdroplets Forms Luminescence and Causes Chemical Reactions in Surrounding Gas
Article Publication Date
14-Mar-2025
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