Existing transmission power grids suffer from high maintenance costs and scalability issues along with a lack of effective and secure system monitoring. To address these problems, we propose to use Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) as a technology to achieve energy efficient, reliable, and low-cost remote monitoring of transmission grids. With WSNs, smart grid enables both utilities and customers to monitor, predict and manage energy usage effectively and react to possible power grid disturbances in a timely manner. However, the increased application of WSNs also introduces new security challenges, especially related to privacy, connectivity, and security management, repeatedly causing unpredicted expenditures. Monitoring the status of the power system, a large amount of sensors generates massive amount of sensitive data. In order to build an effective Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) for a smart grid, we focus on designing a methodology of efficient and secure delivery of the data measured on transmission lines. We perform a set of simulations, in which we examine different routing algorithms, security mechanisms and WSN deployments in order to select the parameters that will not affect the delivery time but fulfill their role and ensure security at the same time. Furthermore, we analyze the optimal placement of direct wireless links, aiming at minimizing time delays, balancing network performance and decreasing deployment costs.
Keywords: overhead transmission lines; reliability; security; smart grid; wireless sensor networks.