A consortium of universities, research laboratories and industry partners will take a $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation to modernize the state's century-old electrical grid. Announced by lawmakers on Friday, the grant will fund a SMART Grid Center at the University of New Mexico -- it's not a physical building, but a "novel, interdisciplinary research center that will address pressing design, operational, data, and security challenges of next-generation electric power management," said William Michener, principal investigator for the award. Michener is also the state director of New Mexico's Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, or EPSCoR, program, which is directed at jurisdictions traditionally underfunded in research grants. The SMART Grid Center -- which stands for Sustainable, Modular, Adaptive, Resilient and Transactive -- has four main research objectives: improving the resilience and cybersecurity of the grid, utilizing machine-learning algorithms to optimize power production and building in simulations and testbed systems to validate performance and sustainability. The fourth and most comprehensive objective will be to adapt the existing electrical infrastructure to accept wind, solar and other new forms of energy, without a noticeable decrease in supply.