What is electricity transmission?

The electric system is made up of an interconnected network of generating plants, transmission lines and distribution facilities. Transmission lines, which consist of heavy cables strung between tall towers, provide the transportation highways to move electricity from generation sources to where the customer uses it at a business or home or in a factory.

Transmission lines can vary from a few kilometres long in an urban environment to thousands of kilometres for lines carrying power from remote power plants. The transmission lines are interconnected with each other to form larger networks, so that if one line should fail, another will take over the electric load. Transmission lines can be overhead or underground.

In most cases, the electricity carried on transmission lines is alternating current (AC), which travels more efficiently at high voltages and can be easily changed from low voltage to high voltage, and vice versa.