Researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found that solar inverters — which link solar panels to the wider grid — can be shut down or manipulated to potentially disrupt the flow of electricity. They first presented their new study at the virtual USENIX Security 2020 conference earlier this month. Mohammad Al Faruque, a UC Irvine associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science who led the research, said inverters can be hijacked with equipment worth less than $50.