New initiative underway at NREL is intended to prevent hackers from gaining control of parts of the nation's power grid, potentially damaging electrical equipment, and causing localized power outages. Hired as director of the Cyber Physical Systems Security and Resilience Center, Erfan Ibrahim launched effort to build the Test Bed for Secure Distributed Grid Management, a hardware system that mimics communications, power systems, and cybersecurity layers for utility's power distribution system.