2013 Solar Flare?

[Tarrel]

If you look over a fairly lengthy time-horizon, major solar flares are not unusual and have been happening since forever. What's changed is us. We've become far more dependent on sensitive electronics for communications, financial transactions, monitoring and control, etc.

The Carrington Event in the 1850's was the last really big one, and the first to have a demonstrable effect of human-created technology. It fried the early telegraph system that was in place at that time. Previous events would have gone largely un-noticed, apart from, perhaps, dramatic Aurora displays. The next one, AFAIAA, is likely to have a much bigger impact.

As far as the grid is concerned, apparently we are far more resilient here than say, the US, due to the layout of our grid. If a major transformer is blown out here, it won't affect everything downstream of it because of redundancies in the inter-connectors. Anyone else heard this, or have a different view?