Detection of Power Theft in Low Voltage Distribution Systems: A Review from the Indian Perspective

Abstract

Rampant power theft is a growing concern for power distribution companies as well as the country's economy at the low voltage consumer end. Power theft including theft of power, defective meters, or errors in billing has been an area of growing attention from researchers. Power theft affects the power supply efficiency, raises the demand on the generating station, and causes significant harm to the legitimate customers. This is a major problem in developing countries, and detecting and dealing with the people responsible for theft have been extremely troublesome for utility companies. This paper discusses the factors that influence power theft and pilferages. In this paper, we have given due diligence to the literature review on the methods for detecting power theft. Apparently in a huge democratic setup like India, none of the proposed methods have been very effective so far. There has been no respite from the rampant power thefts, which at times happens in a very organized manner by well-known establishments. There are many power distribution companies active in India. All these companies install energy meters in every house for the measurement of the power consumption. However, the consumers tamper and bypass these devices to connect unauthorized loads sometimes in cohort with the employees of these distribution companies. The change to centralized metering infrastructure for a huge number of consumers is not a feasible solution at all. Thus there is a need for designing alternate low-cost tamper free smart energy meter to detect and communicate the pilferage of power.

Keywords:

• Advanced metering infrastructure
• Non-technical loss
• Power theft
• Power pilferage
• Power theft detection
• Smart energy meter

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Arvind Kumar Gupta

Arvind Kumar Gupta received the BTech degree in electronics and communication engineering from Uttar Pradesh Technical University, Lucknow, India, in 2013, and the MS degree from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, in 2018. He is currently pursuing the PhD degree in the Advanced Technology Development Center, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. His current research interests include embedded systems, internet of things, and machine learning methods for fault diagnosis. Email: [email protected]

Aurobinda Routray

Aurobinda Routray is a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. His research interests include nonlinear and statistical signal processing, signal-based fault detection and diagnosis, real-time and embedded signal processing, numerical linear algebra, and data-driven diagnostics.

VN Achutha Naikan

VN Achutha Naikan is a professor in the Subir Chowdhury School of Quality and Reliability, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. His research interests include reliability engineering, condition-based maintenance, quality control and simulation. Email: [email protected]