Payback analysis in identification and monitoring of commercial losses in distribution networks

Commercial losses, or non-technical losses, represent a significant portion of the unbilled energy for power utilities. As an example, in Brazil, illegal connections in distribution networks are responsible for economic losses of about US$ 4.6 billion per year. Nowadays, advances in smart grids create a propitious scenario for the use of Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs) to design an application that solves this kind of problem. This paper presents a prototype of a low cost power meter for identification of commercial losses in distribution networks. This device uses IED concepts, with data communication to a central processing and analysis system. To demonstrate the applicability in power utilities, it is presented an economic viability and expected payback analysis of the proposed solution. This payback is calculated based on the IEDs costs and expected billing from the illegal connections detected. The developed prototype is under tests and preliminary results are described in the paper.