tamperfinderTHE Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) has invested US$30 million into technology to stem the approximately US$100 million it loses annually due to electricity theft islandwide.
In fact, the investment, which the power company said is its largest to date, is approximately one-third of the company’s total capital budget for this year.
“Last year we spent about US$15 million, previous years it would be roughly between US$8 and US$10 million, so the whole idea this year [is that] we are spending more because what we are trying to do, in a real way, is to lay the foundation for measurements.
“This year is what we call the foundation year, because [when] we put those measurement devices in place [we] will then be able to be more targeted in our approach to the [electricity] theft,” director of losses, operations and analytics Rasheed Anderson said on Wednesday.
JPS announced the multimillion-dollar investment during Wednesday’s press briefing at its head office in New Kingston.
Reporters were told that residential consumers are responsible for 9.5 of the 18 per cent of energy that is stolen each year.
The technology is expected to capture the residential and commercial customers who continue to bypass the 95-year-old company’s system.
“What we are focusing on and has been increasingly focusing on is sophisticated ways in which persons steal. They use what would be normal electronic devices such as contactor, switch gear and stuff like that, but they use it in such a way as to abstract electricity illegally.
“We have invested heavily in advanced measuring systems, analytical and theft detection software that gives us the ability to pinpoint where the theft is happening, what type of theft is happening, and when it is happening, so that allows us now to prioritise and deploy our resources in a more strategic way to apprehend the persons who are involved in stealing electricity,” Anderson said. “We also have strategies that are tailored towards different groups of persons stealing, and not just groups of persons but even the strategies spread for geographical area, so… that we have a different strategy for residential, different strategy for commercial, different strategy for urban, rural and so forth.
“We also have a different strategy for Portmore, a different strategy for St James. What we are doing now… the broad spread over the island and really trying to pinpoint, with a fair degree of accuracy, where and when it happens at every single point on our network,” Anderson explained, adding that before JPS could only identify the communities where electricity theft was taking place.
Additionally, Anderson said 5,308 of the “sophisticated” types of meter bypass and tampering are actually done outside inner-city communities.
Reporters were also told that three employees were dismissed recently for corruption.
In the meantime, Anderson said inner-city communities require more than a technological approach to combat electricity theft.
“Even though we can measure and know what we are losing exactly, in these areas, when we put in a particular solution the efforts or the results are quickly eroded, simply because of the resilience of those persons,” he explained. “You have to understand that in some of these areas, persons are cultured to steal. They would have never, ever seen a light bill before in their life. Their parents steal, they just see it as a norm.
“It is more changing the behaviour than just saying, ‘I caught you stealing’. That will only have an impact for a day, sometimes two days, because as you leave that is how they steal,” Anderson said.[http://www.jamaicaobserver.com]
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