Techno-economic reasons for construction of electrical substations on step-like ground surface and related open issues

This paper is intended to analyze the reasons behind the Construction of Electrical Substations by the utilities on Step-like ground surfaces. Due to urbanization and increased cost of land, the Electrical Power Transmission utilities are finding it very difficult to get suitable uniform levelled land for construction of substations. This has made the utilities to use the available land area and design tailor made substation layouts. This paper deals with the technical and economic aspects of such problems and that for the commonly adopted solution - construction of substation on step-like ground. Two of the already constructed substation will be taken for illustration. Further, the open problem associated with the grounding for such substations will be enumerated giving the direction for the future work.