For the first 2 months of the current year, power engineers of Mordovenergo, a branch of IDGC of Volga, PJSC (a member of Rosseti Group of Companies), detected 62 facts of unaccounted consumption of electricity in the domestic sector and 18 cases of power theft by legal entities. Total unaccounted power consumption amounted to 205 thousand kWh.
Among the facts of theft revealed, the palm of victory belongs to a violation, expressed in connecting to the electric grids by "sidestepping" the metering devices. However, compared with the same period of last year, such facts grow fewer. At the same time, more and more cases are revealed of implementing new methods of theft with the use of powerful magnets embedded into meters, electronic devices.
Power engineers state that this problem is system-wide and without tightening the legislation in the field of industrial magnets and changing standards for meters produced, the measures taken by grid companies will have low efficiency. In order to reduce the illegal distribution of special technical devices, Mordovenergo initiated the blocking of 15 websites describing methods of power theft and offering metering devices with built-in remote shutdown devices. In the legislation, there have also been some changes, which significantly complicate stealing electricity to the power thieves.
So, since January 01 of the current year, the "Rules for the provision of public services to owners and users of premises in apartment buildings and residential buildings" have introduced requirements for the protection of meters from unauthorized intervention by indicators of antimagnetic seals. So now, at the legislative level, the right of a power supply company to formalize an act on unaccounted consumption, in case of damaging the indicator of an antimagnetic seal, is fixed.