@tct1000

That is Entirely Normal  There is a natural voltage gradient from the ionosphere to ground with an average of 100V/meter above ground level.

The problem is to utilize it, you need a large collection area to match the atmospheric output impedance that's roughly 375Ω.  That doesn't let you use much current without the voltage dropping entirely to zero, so must put many in parallel.  Antennas are simple devices to match impedance from an electric line to the atmosphere to emit electromagnetic radiation.   Receiving is easy, but not "free energy" easy.

We're also constantly bathed with 60Hz to 20Mhz EMI radiation of different levels from all the wires in our house acting as antennas to both transmit and receive and our switching power supplies running at a much high frequency (to hundreds of Mhz and more) to use smaller inductive reactive components instead of the big brick power adapters we had in the 90s and before.   We don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing yet.  

@Alacran
Either an EMP or Carrington Event level CME would put us back to the 1800s and likely start wars that have been brewing a long time.     A whole ton of skills would need to be re-learned from building electric generators and motors to smelting metal and recycling.  Hard  to do that when in the middle of a civil war which is happening at the same time as a world war land grab.   It literally could put our dumb asses into an ignorant self imposed Extinction Level Event, not from primary causes but from secondary and further reactions.

We need to be adding magnetic shielding to all of our infrastructure in addition to the RF (Faraday) Shielding to prevent stray RF radiation, steel plates need to enclose all infrastructure to route magnetic anomalies around the structure instead of just through it.  Rebar isn't enough for the magnetic portion, though mesh rebar does reduce the RF level surges, magnetic surges on our power lines are the biggest vulnerability.  Need many more fuses and spark gap arrestors to route any 1kV+ surge to ground and enclose all transformers in steel entirely with more than just a steel case to lower the impact a bit, a second enclosure being both a Faraday/RF conductive and magnetic (high magnetic permeability materials like iron plate) shield on all of our infrastructure is "too expensive to consider" when the alternative is living in the Wild West again, I can't really think of anything more important than that.  All this money for culture BS and 3rd world country aid who end up funding terrorists could be building protection for the majority of our grid.    Most data centers already have these protections in place, same with telco (sometimes co-located with data centers).   The source of it all, the electric power grid has the most long length free air cables off the ground and unprotected substations and is ripe for an attack, and we have no spare parts for even a minor event.

@Ciraxis

Seeing a good aurora show is one of the great natural shows behind only the eclipse.  Rainbow and sun dogs and others are on the top 5, but total eclipse and heavy multi-color aurora curtains is a site to see.

The cameras both enhance and don't represent it, the camera doesn't catch the fading in and out and flow of curtains, though the camera get the colors much brighter, it's frozen and not the ephemeral wisps of it.

I only saw a minor show, similar to what is seen on some fall/winter nights.  Nothing jaw dropping like the photos from previous nights that are posted in this thread.   This was amazing to have them seen in Florida and Louisiana!

Hopefully won't see for a while again and not a precursor to something that would simply rip most of our ionosphere away.