"FPL will receive $200 million to install 2.6 million smart meters and other technologies that promise to reduce energy costs for customers. CenterPoint Energy in Houston, Texas, gets $200 million to install 2.2 million smart meters (.pdf) and more than 550 sensors and automated switches. Baltimore Gas and Electric in Maryland is another $200-million recipient. Strange, then, that another press release distributed Monday by the Information Trust Institute at the University of Illinois announces a grant of $18.8 million to four academic institutions to fund a five-year research project into securing the power grid. The project is supposed to make certain that the smart meters and other devices implemented by power companies can resist hackers and other attackers. The latter grant, from the U.S. Departments of Energy and Homeland Security, provides funding to the Institute, along with Dartmouth College, the University of California at Davis in California and Washington State University for a research program called Trustworthy Cyber Infrastructure for the Power Grid. “It reflects a strong consensus that cybersecurity and resilience will be critical to the realization of a modernized, reliable, and efficient power grid, so that it will be able to guarantee delivery of electricity to consumers and maintain critical operations, even when malicious cyber attacks occur,” reads the press release." - Steven Perez from Bookmarklet