In all engineering projects, the economic aspect is of paramount
importance. In most of the cases the cost decides whether a certain
project will be feasible or not, although political and other considerations
may intervene sometimes. Economic problem occurs in
the fields of generation, transmission, distribution and utilization of
electrical power and of course, in refurbishment and uprating
schemes. The motive of the hydro engineer must be to adopt the
most economic and most convenient scheme after carefully
investigating the relative costs of the possible schemes.