Electric power delivery to big cities

The demographics of urban areas are changing with every passing day making big cities grow even bigger. The influx of population is straining the infrastructure in big cities that needs to be addressed to maintain sustainability of city services. This paper addresses the electric power supply that is the most important of these services. The electric power delivery to big cities poses many challenges for electric utilities and city planners. This paper discusses issues pertaining to these challenges and attempts to highlight possible remedies. It covers the high voltage and low voltage transmission lines and substations that make up the power delivery system. Some of the significant issues discussed in this paper include fault current, disparity in system strength around cities, reactive power, and switchgear arrangement at transmission substations. This paper proposes to expand the scope of power quality issues to better define and handle these issues in big cities.