The Open Philanthropy Project awarded a grant of $493,425 over three years to Professor Trevor Gaunt, Emeritus Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa, to research the potential risks that geomagnetic storms could pose to the electric power system. The grant funding will be used primarily to support graduate students to do research under Professor Gaunt’s supervision. It will also be used to purchase equipment and enable Professor Gaunt and his students to attend conferences to share the results of the research.
Open Philanthropy investigated geomagnetic storms in 2014 and 2015 as part of its interest in global catastrophic risks. A summary of the findings can be found in this series of blog posts.