alt Hacker NewsShockingly...yes, and in some cases that is being done intentionally e.g. solar/battery systems require communication within the grid and the Internet is being used as the network.
What makes this particularly embarrassing is that power companies literally run thousands of miles of cables and could easily build a private network instead of using the Internet. The regulations should be amended to require it.
Private networks are not that much of a savior... It is incredibly easy to bridge networks intentionally or unintentionally. Stuxnet is just one example. Even private networks have to be as completely secure as a public one. Worse because it's 'private' people think it needs less internal security because "Why secure it, no one can get to it".