Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
This paper explores and fortifies the need for a robust communications infrastructure for the upcoming smart grid and computes the bandwidth requirement for a hypothetical grid infrastructure. It presents the architecture of the current distribution system and shows that even for a medium-sized grid, the latency requirements of messages on the smart grid will require optical fibers as the transmission medium.
Aggarwal et al. (Fri,) studied this question.