Power System or grid is a legacy system with collection of wide-variety of components, processes and equipments that make a physical system for generation, transmission, distribution and utilization of electricity. Over the years complexity of the system has grown in a multifold fashion, posing tremendous challenges during its operation. In order to meet the needs of 21st century grid challenges, Smart Grid has evolved which uses advanced computational intelligence based technologies and infrastructure for better, efficient management of the grid. Automation is one such technology which has become a vision of a smart grid that uses communication and IT based systems for automatically managing and controlling the operations of the grid. In this paper, we present an overview of grid automation and its standardization from generation to utilization systems and discuss some of the challenges. © 2014 IEEE.