Electricity Theft More Common than You Think

Electricity Theft: more common than you think.

Electricity Theft

Nowadays Electricity Theft has become popular worldwide not only in regions such as Latin-American but also in the USA, and other first-world countries. For example, in the USA they are already working to solve this issue and to diminish the losses that these practices could cause to the electrical system in North America. Annually it is said that the electrical American system loses around $6 billion.

Who carries out these Electricity Theft practices?

There are many types of Electricity Theft or to be more specific there are many groups dedicated to Electricity Theft.  People who only want to save money and make illegal installations like connecting to a neighbor’s electric service. There are also bigger groups or organizations dedicated to this activity, it is said that there are some known cases of Electricity Theft related to Marijuana grow-ops.

In the USA the principal ones affected by the Theft of Electricity are the utilities which are private or public companies in charge of the generation, transmission, and distribution of electric power. The private ones are handled by investors, there are also federal, municipal, or cooperative utilities. In Texas, the utilities have reunited to create systems to prevent Electricity Theft, although it seems to be that this issue is not going to be solved for a long time.

Furthermore, in Texas, Electricity Theft is a real fact and it is growing, for example in 2010 with the heatwave in Houston, Electricity Theft increased excessively due to a lot of people wanted to reduce the high costs as a result of the high temperatures and the use of the AC. For this reason, the Centerpoint Utility in charge of the area of Houston created a special unit for Electricity Theft detention and they decided to apply the installation of smart meters to prevent these facts. Other utilities such as ONCO, AEP CENTRAL, and TEXAS NEW MEXICO POWER joined this idea.

Negative effects of Electricity Theft

• Billionaire losses to the electrical American system.
• More regulations for the electrical system.
• Electric failure due to illegal installations.

Although measures have been implemented to prevent these events, as mentioned above, it seems that this problem will not be solved soon, we can mention that there are already systems of ‘hacking’ to the smart meters that were initially implemented by Centerpoint and were adopted by other utilities. Our recommendation is: Do not perform illegal acts such as Electricity theft, you may face serious legal problems.

If you think you are a victim of Electricity Theft, we can give you advise

Electricity Express

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Resources

http://www.electronicdesign.com/power/smart-meter-advances-stop-electricity-theft

http://www.nationalgeographic.es/medio-ambiente/alguien-te-roba-la-electricidad-de-tu-casa