Crews worked Saturday to restore power and traffic lights after they were knocked out by… Hurricane Matthew is stress-testing a costly new effort by utilities and the U.S. government to make the nation’s electric grid more storm-resistant. Early indications: the investment is paying off. From 2008 through 2017, the U.S. government and utilities are expected to spend more than $32 billion on smart-grid and storm-hardening technology, according to a federal report. That includes systems designed to resist wind, flying debris and flooding—and allow power providers to identify damage and restore electric service more quickly. A stimulus package passed by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2009 pumped $4.5 billion into electric-system upgrades, supplementing an even larger investment by utilities in cutting-edge gear. The money helped utilities swap out old-fashioned meters for 65 million digital meters—about a third of the U.S. total—that now are able to […]