Secondly, systems evaluations of supply increments have replaced individual project evaluations. Up until the late 1940's the established procedure for coming to an investment decision was to consider a “least cost” engineering solution on an individual site or station basis. More recently, with the technological advances in higher voltage, longer distance transmission with the increasing entry of public systems into virtually all supply sectors, projects have become interconnected systems and intersystem coordination has demanded attention in the interests of economic efficiency and reliability. Hence, evaluations of power supply increments per se are neither useful nor relevant for planning; rather, evaluations must be made of existing systems with and without the new supply increments. This holds for conventional systems as well as mixtures of new and old technology. A first step will be to select one or more forecasts of future demand for power as made by the Federal Power Commission, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the Edison Electric Institute. Next, it will be necessary to describe new central station power requirements by size for the entire period of forecast. Finally, the load duration curve should be examined to establish capacity versus load factor tables for any new plants. Next, a composite cost structure in the 1990 to 2000 time frame without an SSPS, given the range of options available at that time, should be forecast. These costs should be developed for each element of the system: generation, transmission and distribution. The costs of conventional power systems are well documented, and information such as that published by the Federal Power Commission and the Edison Electric Institute is a primary source. All power systems consist of generation, transmission, and distribution elements and the balance design requires that tradeoffs be made, particularly between plant size and transmission costs. Recent trends toward larger and larger plants have occurred, because the larger plants can gain efficiency and economy sufficient to offset the greater transmission costs that removal from load center implies. This trend is further accelerated by advancements in transmission technology, but these alone do not suffice to raise the size of central power station plants. Recent trends in environmental standards for transmission systems may raise, rather than lower, transmission costs and thus make central station power plants located nearer to the consumer of interest indicating that plant siting flexibility, ease of energy resource supply and waste product disposal will be important considerations. The hypothesis of likely system configurations in the 1990-2000 time frame must take into consideration such cost trends. It may be necessary to consider several assumptions about transmission costs in order to see how these might affect the system structure at that time. The composite cost structure of any power generation system should include the expense of mitigating environmental damage. It will be necessary to identify and characterize principal environmental and social issues surrounding the generation, conversion, and use of energy and assign costs to them. In some cases it will not be possible to assign rigorous values to certain extreme events, but for the more likely and usual hazards one can and should develop various damage surrogate figures, for example, insurance premiums.
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