Energy technologies are of particular importance to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Energy is a key driver of the country’s development and economic growth. Furthermore, the electricity sector in the Kingdom faces great challenges in fulfilling the rising demand for electricity consumption that is the foundation for economic and social development. The annual growth of electricity consumption in the KSA is estimated at 6.4 percent. In order to meet this demand, additional generation plants and reinforcement of distribution and transmission systems are needed. The estimated power generation for the year 2023 is estimated at 59,000 megawatts compared with 25,000 megawatts in 2001. Attempts to find scientific solutions to keep pace with this growing demand necessitate technology transfer and the development of technologies to improve electrical energy generation, transmission, distribution, and utilization.

In today' s competitive electric utility marketplace in the world, reliable and real-time information become the key factor for reliable delivery of power to the end-users, profitability of the electric utility and customer satisfaction. Equipment failures, generation capacity limitations, lightning strikes, accidents, and natural catastrophes all cause power disturbances and outages and often result in long service interruptions. Given the increasing age of utility grid infrastructure and the increasing electricity demand, intelligent and low-cost utility monitoring and control systems realized by smart micro-sensor devices have become essential to maintain safety, reliability, efficiency, and uptime of such systems. With the evolution of new sensors, embedded intelligence capabilities, and communication platforms, opportunities exist for the development and design of robust and intelligent sensor networks that enable the smart grid applications, such as automatic meter reading, remote system monitoring and control, equipment fault diagnostics, and distribution automation.

Importantly, all these applications would lead to new products, processes and services, improving industrial efficiency and use of sustainable energy resources while providing a competitive edge for the world in the global market place. At the same time, it would ensure the reliability of the electric power infrastructure, helping to improve the daily lives of ordinary citizens. All this makes low cost sensor-network based electric power grid monitoring and control an important element for achieving the largest knowledge-based economy in the world.

With its low cost as one of the main advantages, the WSNs provide a feasible and cost-effective sensing and communication solution for the remote system monitoring and diagnostic systems for electric power grid. Efficient monitoring systems constructed by large-scale deployment of smart sensor nodes can provide complete information on the conditions of system components, including generation units, transformers, transmission lines, etc., in a remote, continuous, and online manner. With the real-time system monitoring and system level coordinating controls and protections, a single system contingency in the electric power grid could be detected and isolated, before it causes cascading effects and results more catastrophic system breakdowns.

Overall, this research proposal opens up many theoretical and practical research possibilities in wireless sensor networks and their applications to electric power systems.

Unlike existing work, the proposed Spectrum-Aware and Cross-Layer Communication (SCC) framework will consider all the unique channel characteristics of harsh electric power system environments simultaneously, while dynamically adapting its protocol configurations.