Leonard Cohen's Bird on a Wire would have come a close second given the need to take into account the needs of the other (feathered) residents of the Jerrabomberra Wetlands as the work progressed.

ActewAGL chief executive Michael Costello told guests at Tuesday morning's launch that his organisation was Australia's cheapest and most reliable electricity supplier. The latest investment is all about keeping it that way.

Planning for the development, which dates back almost a decade, was complicated by its location in the wetlands, a native bird habitat that may soon be the subject of disputation between Canberra Airport on the one hand and conservationists on the other.

The airport's draft master plan, released on Sunday, was critical of any further expansion of the wetlands on the grounds it would increase the risk of bird strike to planes arriving and taking off.

Mr Costello said local community, environmental and indigenous groups had been extensively consulted to ensure disruption to the environment had been kept to an absolute minimum.

The substation will make a lasting contribution to Canberra's electricity security by anticipating the growth in demand for power from Fyshwick, the airport precinct and South Canberra.

Even though the airport generates its own peak power electricity using recently installed gas-fuelled generators, it still relies on the grid for off-peak power.

Rob Atkin, ActewAGL's general manager of network services, said the substation was deceptively simple in concept and highly sophisticated and complex in execution.

Before a walk-through which allowed a close-up look at the huge transformers that step the power down from 132,000 volts to the 11,000 volts (132 and 11 kilovolts respectively) that is distributed through the ACT's transmission lines, we were repeatedly warned not to touch anything, keep our hands in our pockets and wear the requisite hard hats, vests and safety goggles.

While some orders of magnitude below the millions and sometimes billions of volts contained in a bolt of a lightning, the energies being handled through the substation are significant and highly dangerous.

On-site emergency shower facilities and firefighting are just some of the more visible precautions taken to keep the workforce and the expensive equipment safe.

According to Mr Atkin the 132 kilovolt lines that bring power into Canberra can be likened to extremely large water mains.

The sophisticated, and enormous, transformer array that is housed in an unroofed and open-walled secure enclosure, steps those ''mains'' down into the smaller 11 kilovolt pipes that then take the power to the suburbs.

Pole-mounted transformers are then used to step the power down further from 11,000 volts to the 240 volts used by homes and businesses.

''If you use water mains as an analogy, then volts are an indication of pressure and amperes are an indication of the rate of flow,'' Mr Atkin said.

Given that the transformer is effectively sitting in the open in the middle of a bird sanctuary, one obvious question was how does ActewAGL intend to deal with the challenge of birds pooping on its multimillion-dollar and nicely toasty piece of equipment.

The short answer, according to one employee, is that ''it is something you get used to; you climb up and wash it off''.

Congratulations to Lachlan Bryant, pictured, the ACT winner of this year's Simpson Prize, which was announced in Parliament earlier this week.

The national history competition looks at the legacy of Anzac and is open to all Year 10 and 11 students in the country.

Lachlan, a Year 11 student from Marist College, will visit Gallipoli and Istanbul next month with seven other winners.