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The methodology of planning systems to meet stated goals in an optimum manner while recognizing all pertinent constraints is being given increasing attention by systems engineers. In the electric utility industry the greatly increased complexity of the systems required to meet anticipated load growth, the advent of large-scale interconnection of systems, increasing investment costs and the pressure for continued economy of service have necessitated continuing efforts to achieve more comprehensive and exacting approaches to system planning. Significant progress in system planning has been achieved to date in the electric utility industry. Integrated digital computer programs have been devised which permit the modeling of the technical and economic performance of future system design alternatives and aid the system planner in obtaining an optimum total system beginning with the sources of fuel and ending with the final delivery of power to the customer. By the methods presented in this paper the total present worth cost of various alternative system designs may be readily obtained. Limited work has been undertaken concerning the direct optimum synthesis of a system plan. The major difficulty in direct synthesis arises from the complex interrelationships of the variables and the high dimensionality of the problem.