ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief tutorial on planning, specifically electric power system planning, with some comments on planning of distribution generation. It discusses the purpose of short-range and long-range planning. The chapter looks at several different planning philosophies or paradigms. Electric service planning is a decision-making process to identify the available options and determine which is the best for the situation at hand. Its purpose is to determine the best schedule of future resources and actions to achieve a company’s, an individual’s, or an organization’s goals with respect to power. The actual planning process will combine the evaluation and selection functions in a process designed to reject alternatives quickly and with minimum effort. The purpose of electric utility short-range planning is to make certain that the system can continue to serve customer load while meeting all standards and criteria.
