A system and method for reporting and control in an electrical power distribution grid including a plurality of sensor devices forming a sensor network are disclosed. Each sensor device monitors and measures attributes of line current for an associated electrical power distribution line at a selected location. Control sensor devices will have control capabilities in addition to its monitoring and measurement capabilities. The sensor devices can detect a fault in a branch of the power grid and send control and fault detected messages to an adjacent upstream sensor on a wireless network comprising a plurality of contention access and contention free time slots wherein a number of the contention free time slots is equal to or greater than a number of sensors in the plurality of sensors.