Smart grid technologies leveraging advancements in sensors, communications, and computing offer new avenues for reliability enhancements of complex power grids by increasing the up-times and reducing the down times. This paper discusses various aspects of smart grid monitoring and proposes a mathematical model to assess its impact on power grid reliability. Based on a multiple-state Markov chain model, the failure and repair rates of power components with and without monitoring provisions are determined and compared. The proposed formulation incorporates the failure rates of the monitoring systems themselves and the impact on system/component reliability.