Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is a strong candidate for smart grid applications, such as advanced
metering infrastructure, demand response management, dynamic pricing, load control, electricity fraud
detection, fault diagnostics, substation monitoring and control as well as automation of various elements of
the power grid. The realization of these applications directly depends on efficiency of communication
facilities among power grid elements. However, the harsh power grid environmental conditions with
obstacles, noise, interference, and fading pose great challenges to reliability of these facilities to monitor
and control the power grid. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate performance of WSNs in different
power grid environments such as 500 kv substations, main power control room, and underground network
transformer vaults. The power grid environments are modeled using a log-normal shadowing path loss
model channel with realistic parameters. The network is simulated and performance is evaluated using
packet delivery ratio, communication delay, and energy consumption. The simulation results have revealed
that different environments have considerable impacts on performance of WSNs which make it suitable for
most applications that need low data rate with low reliability requirements.