Power theft prevention in distribution system using smart devices

Abstract

Power theft is one of the major issues of electricity transmission and distribution. It is prominent in developing countries and pilots to an annual losses of around INR 3000 crores in India. It is estimated that power theft accounts to 1.5% of Gross Domestic Production (GDP) which is significant and cannot be negligible. Power theft prevention is a system used to perceive and prevent illegal load tappings on distribution lines. Many schemes are available for the same and a scheme using smart electric devices employing electronic energy meter is used in this paper. A real time comparison method is used to compare the current at L.V (low voltage) side of the distribution transformer with that of the consumption of connected legal consumers. A wireless zigbee module is employed for this purpose. An automatic control unit is used to inject frequency disturbances in L.V lines, after disconnecting the legal consumers’ loads once power theft is detected. A simple design for single phase distribution system is proposed for analysis and same can be implemented for three phase system by adding relevant features.