Aging Power Delivery Infrastructures, 2nd Edition

5 Cost and Economic Evaluation

5.1 INTRODUCTION

As was stated previously, reliability and service quality are very important, but “cost is king” in almost all-electric distribution decisions, both those made by consumers and by utilities. Every decision contains or implies certain costs: equipment, installation labor, operating, maintenance, losses, and many others. Regardless what type of paradigm is being used, and whether traditional or new technologies are being considered, planners and decisionmakers must deal with cost as a major element of their evaluation.

Many planning decisions revolve around selecting from alternatives on the basis of when they call for money to be spent. Two plans might be equal with respect to capacity and reliability, ...