Abstract
The traditional power grid in many countries suffers from high maintenance costs and scalability issues along with the huge expense of building new power stations, and lack of efficient system monitoring that could increase the overall performance by acting proactively in preventing potential failures. To address these problems, a next-generation electric power system, called the smart grid (SG), has been proposed as an evolutionary system for power generation, transmission, and distribution. To this end, the SGs utilize renewable energy generation, smart meters and modern sensing and communication technologies for effective power system management, and hence, succeeding in addressing many of the requirements of a modern power grid system while significantly increase its performance. Recently, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been recognized as a promising technology to achieve seamless, energy efficient, reliable, and low-cost remote monitoring and control in SG applications. In these systems, the required information can be provided to electric utilities by wireless sensor systems to enable them to achieve high system efficiency. The real-time information gathered from these sensors can be analyzed to diagnose problems early and serve as a basis for taking remedial action. In this paper, first WSN-based SG applications have been explored along with their technical challenges. Then, design challenges and protocol objectives have been discussed for WSN-based SG applications. After exploring applications and design challenges, communication protocols for WSN-based SG applications have been explained in detail. Here, our goal is to elaborate on the role of WSNs for smart grid applications and to provide an overview of the most recent advances in MAC and routing protocols for WSNs in this timely and exciting field.