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ELE.05   :   Procedures   to   reduce   Electric   Theft

Pre-requiste readings : RLPP

    Contents
  1. Problem
  2. Solution? ELE.05
  3. Advantages of ELE.05
  4. Draft of the act to create procedure ELE.05

Problem of electricity theft

In India, in many parts, electricity theft has reached almost 35% of the total production. This is sufficient to create a massive burden on any honest bill payer. And the theft is open, and in almost all cases of big theft, the employees of distribution companies are hand in gloves with the theives. Fortunately, the solution is TRIVIAL.


Solution? ELE.05 - Procedure to reduce power theft

Following are the technical ways and means to reduce electricity theft
  1. Installing electronic meters which can note time as well current unit reading at an interval of say every 10 minutes, store the readings of several weeks/months in the memory, and transmit the readings to a distance of say 20-30 meters when they receive a signal for reading. This will also reduce the time/cost of reading electric meters.

  2. The meters should be at the connection point to end users as well as at the intermediate branch points.

  3. At several points there should be two meters in series, so that if a person is rigging meters, he will have to rig both the meters, not just one.

  4. By obtaining readings of these meters, it is easy to determine the points at which the electricity is being stolen.

Following are the administrative procedures by which citizens can deploy the above techonology and use it to prevent electricity theft :
  1. Case-I : There are multiple distribution companies in the same area.
    1. a distribution company MUST be required to recover all its losses from its users ONLY, and the state/district will NOT pay even a penny to cover its losses.
    2. Now a distribution company with higher theft will have to put a higher surcharge on its user. And one with lower theft will be able to provide cheaper electricity.
    3. So citizens will switch the distribution company, or expel the inefficient company and bring better one using #ELE.02.
      So the distribution companies will be automatically motivated to implement the some technical means to detect theft.


  2. Case-II : If distrubution company is owned by citizens and is a monopoly
    1. In such case, the entire transmission loss incurring in a district MUST be covered by the an electricity surcharge on the users of THAT district only, NOT by State/Central Govt.
    2. The citizens Jurors can expel the ward/sub-ward officer if the theft exceeds (say) 2% in his sub-ward. This will ensure a fair monitoring all the time.

Advantages of ELE.05

ELE.05 will reduce the theft and thus make electricity cheaper for honest users.


Draft of the act to create procedure ELE.05

To enact ELE.05, two laws need to be passed, one in Assembly and another District Panchayat. I have drafted the texts for those laws. To see the draft, please click here.

     Now citizens can ask MLAs and Panchayat Members to pass this Act. But IMO, it will be wiser for citizens to first enact procedure LM.01 and LM.02, and then use LM.01 and LM.02 to pass this ELE.05 drafts WITHOUT any help from MLAs and Panchayat Members. To know about procedure LM.01, please click here and to know about procedure LM.02, please click here.


If you have any other question, please mail it to MehtaRahulC@yahoo.com. Thousand thanks in advance.



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