Conventional electrical grid is transforming into smart grid an evolutionary solution to satisfy rapidly emerging and vibrantly changing requirements of utilities and customers by intelligently leveraging telemetry concepts of instrumentation and control engineering in form of communication technology network infrastructure. The paper presents analogy of 'smart grid' to 'industrial process' and 'communication technology infrastructure' to 'instrumentation telemetry'. Automated Metering Infrastructure (AM!), monitoring and automation of substations, power network monitoring, Home Automation Network (HAN), Demand Response (DR) and integration of solar PV have been identified as 'Critical Applications' and Reliability, Scalability, Interoperability, Congestion, Energy Efficiency, Latency and Security - have been identified as 'Critical Parameters'. Review of recent works has been presented for each segment. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.