The impact or losses on the design or distribution cable and overhead netwo
rks is discussed. A minimum life-cycle cost methodology that balances the c
apital investment against the cost of the system losses is used as a basis
for circuit design. The results obtained indicate that the utilisation of d
istribution circuits. particularly at lower voltage levels, should be quite
low. The analysis also shows that the optimal design of the circuits with
cost of losses taken into account is likely to satisfy the security require
ments at no additional cost in most of the system.