Coys advocate smart meter as solution to electricity theft

According to the CWG’s Chief Technology Officer, Mr. James Agada, despite the vital steps taken by the Federal Government in resuscitating the electricity sector, there may not be improvement if power stealing is not addressed.
He explained that deliberate stealing of electricity is widespread and happens through various schemes.
Agada listed ways of power theft to include direct connection to the overhead low tension distribution cables, bypassing the meter so that only a small load is connected to it while the rest are connected directly to the supply behind the meter or tampering with the meter to make its reading inaccurate.
He said, “As the Minister of Power has recently pointed out however, with technical and commercial losses running at 75% in some areas, the entire system will struggle to make the necessary investment to ensure a sustainable and reliable power system. A large percentage (perhaps, 50-60%) of these losses can be attributed to energy theft – people consuming power without paying for it. This can happen either inadvertently or deliberately; inadvertently because the power companies are not metering and collecting the payment. This is usually a smaller percentage because the power companies simply use estimated billing to cover for the unmetered consumers.”
He noted that electricity stealing is often aided and abetted by experienced (current or past) technicians who understand how the systems work, adding that use of smart meters which are able to send their status readings to a central server are easily outfoxed.
Agada disclosed that the smart meter will only have records of the electricity passing through the network it is connected to.
He said, “If it is bypassed, or the connection is directly to the distribution line, the smart meter is unable to detect and report the anomaly. When the meter is itself tampered with by experienced technicians, they may also be able to fool the meter into not reporting the breach. Smart meters depend on being able to communicate their status to a central server which can then analyse the information and hopefully be able to infer thefts using different algorithms.”