The progress of a power system is inseparable from the support of ICTs. In recent years, the rapid development of ICTs provides a variety of possible technical routes and development visions for the development of power systems. By combining the development process of power system information and automation, as well as their core demands for ICTs, this paper systematically analyzes the supporting roles of some new ICTs for power systems, as well as the key challenges in the application processes, and puts forward some possible development visions for a power automation system in the future based on different ideal preferences. At present, a power system has complex demands for ICTs in many respects, such as information, automation, intelligence and communication support. All kinds of ICTs provide systematic support through mutual cooperation from the infrastructure, equipment, data, and application layers as well as other layers. Faced with the constraints of cost, reliability and other aspects, through different ideal preferences, there are different development visions. Among them big data, artificial intelligence, and Beidou technologies are of universal importance. This work is supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2017YFB0902600) and the Science and Technology Project of North China Branch of State Grid Corporation of China (No. SGNC0000TJJS2000149).