Summary Transmission and distribution systems for electricity have undergone a technological revolution in terms of operation and management using computer networks, automation, remote sensing, and information and communication technologies to improve the performance of digital electronic meters. This work describes the integration of a wireless sensor networks (WSNs)–based communication system with an electrical energy‐measurement structure, to verify the feasibility of large‐scale installation of intelligent electronic meters in low‐voltage consumer units. The study is based on simulations, using Castalia, considering 2 scenarios, the first in a flat network and the second in a hierarchical network of WSNs to analyze the feasibility of sending messages from intelligent electronic meters to the concessionaires through a ZigBee network.In addition, the time requirements of the IEC 61850 standard for sending and receiving manufacturing message specifications and generic object‐oriented substation event type messages are verified. This work demonstrated the technical feasibility of using WSNs for different node densities by region and evaluated the location of the sink node, and adequate infrastructures for WSNs were found. This extends time checks for both vertical (usually for supervision) and horizontal (used for protection) messages. The proposed model has great potential to use a WSN infrastructure and to evaluate if this infrastructure allows data transmission of the protocols used in smart grids, mainly verifying the requirements of transmission times required by each application.