A Methodology for Identifying Commercial Electricity Losses

Abstract

The chronic shortage of investments in the development and upgrading of Russian power grids, in the improvement of grid operation control and electricity metering systems in the period from the 1990s to the 2000s led in that they became physically worn and obsolete to a significant degree (up to 70%). This aggravated the dynamics of relative electricity losses in the national power grids in general and the level of losses in individual electric grid companies.

The disappearance of collective farms and state farms has led to unemployment and a significant growth of accounts receivable for electricity from residents living in rural areas.

In turn, this caused debts from energy companies to coal and gas suppliers. There was nothing to buy fuel for. Rolling blackouts were widely practiced to maintain normal operation of power grids under energy carrier shortage conditions. There arose an acute need to reduce commercial electricity losses and monitor the accounting of energy resources. In turn, attempts to reduce commercial electricity losses were hampered by low solvency of the population and the unwillingness of businesses and farmers, who had already accustomed to paying by barter, to pay in cash for the consumed electricity.

The introduction of automated energy fiscal metering systems (AEFMS) made it possible to solve, in many respects, such problems as the refusal of consumers to provide access to metering devices in residential and industrial premises, underestimation of the actually consumed amount of electricity, and to exclude mass-scale electricity theft. The improvement of electricity metering systems has led to improvement of electricity theft methods and techniques. Electricity theft by directly hooking to overhead power line wires, stopping the disks of the induction meter counting mechanism, and laying hidden inputs in bypass of the electricity fiscal metering devices have become a thing of the past. However, the "shunting" of AEFMS devices, the installation of "dummies", and the soldering of additional microcircuits with a radio relay began to spread to the full extent.

The article presents a methodology for locating the spots of commercial electricity losses in networks equipped with AEFMS and suggests practical ways to identify electricity theft. All of the described methods have still been used up now and are applicable to identify and reduce commercial electricity losses in any networks equipped with AEFMS.