Lahore Electric Supply Company (LESCO) has detected several modern and sophisticated ways of stealing power during its current anti-theft campaign. Power thieves are ‘expert’ engineers and use advanced technology to steal power by installing various types of switches, remote controls and underground cabling systems etc. It involves more hi-tech engineering than regular electrical work for using power in factories and homes, said a LESCO official.
LESCO has so far saved about 10 MW electricity due to its anti-theft campaign. Police and FIA help forced many power thieves to close their activities while general public is also avoiding such practices. LESCO anti-theft squads are now focusing on industrial and big commercial consumers. Power theft needs advance technology. In India they use remote control devices as small as compass boxes used by school students.
When attached with meter, they produce high voltage and high frequency discharge on pressing a button. This creates a small spark in the meter and results in no data recording. When the user wants the meter to function normally, he reactivates it using the same method. LESCO has started analyzing recovered devices to counter their future use. Besides, FIA has also been asked to trace the persons who make and distribute these systems. LESCO is also going for Remote Metering System, to enable it to check minute changes in a consumer’s load behavior as well as electricity meter.
Power theft is a silent crime and is a worldwide phenomenon that causes heavy revenue losses to power utilities. Criminal investigation and prosecution is needed to combat this social evil, he added. LESCO has also decided to install new meters in boxes and at higher than normal points on poles. Secondly, CEO LESCO has directed XENs and SDOs to personally read meters of industry, commercial and large domestic premises. He appealed to the public to help and cooperate in law enforcement and report power theft. He described this as a national responsibility and added that LESCO is already advertising telephone numbers for this purpose. LESCO is also doing a survey to get the latest and updated data of all its consumers especially industrial, commercial and large domestic units.
It will help the company act effectively against power theft, The survey will update consumer data on sanctioned and present load and status of meter etc, says a press release received on e-mail. The law requires every consumer to notify power companies about load increase but the law is not followed. It is a big reason for inaccurate load management as actual load is different from what the consumers were originally sanctioned. The survey will give LESCO true picture of its consumers. In the meantime, LESCO is continuing its anti-power theft campaign. From June 28 till end July, the company had recovered around Rs 110 million from 284 power thieves.
Data from anti-power theft campaign reveals that so far most power pilferage was detected in northern circle (Badami Bagh, Ravi Road etc). Here officials detected 135 cases, registered 10 FIRs and issued bills for 23,170 units to power thieves. In Central Circle (Iqbal Town etc) it detected 21 cases, registered 8 FIRs and billed for 27,281 units were billed to power thieves. Third was Eastern Circle (Shadman and etc) where 11 cases were detected, 5 FIRs were lodged and 2,240 units were billed. But Southern Circle (Defence) had the most interesting figures. It had the lowest numbers of theft incidents but had the most power – 141,378 stolen units. Here only 6 cases of theft were detected.
