Ghana’s southern power distribution company, ECG, discovered that about 12,416 people in the West African nation had connected power illegally and were consuming it between 2019 and 2021.
The total power consumed by the aforementioned people accounted for 157.16 Gigawatts hour of electricity.
This represents an amount of Gh¢178.44 million (equivalent of US$23,018,760) being recovered by ECG.
Out of the total number of people who were identified to be consuming power illegally, 1,047 were referred to the ECG’s legal department for prosecution to serve as a deterrent to others.
Besides the power theft, ECG said it had to deal with the theft of copper from distribution transformers, utility poles, transformer oil from energised transformers, underground cables, overhead conductors, etc.
ECG revealed these in a tariff proposal submitted to Ghana’s utility regulator, Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC).
“These criminal acts have several adverse consequences including the obvious economic impact, service disruptions and possible danger to ECG personnel, the public and persons involved in the theft,” ECG said.
The ECG mentioned some measures introduced to mitigate the impacts of theft on the company’s operations as working with scrap dealers and law enforcement officials, fencing, warnings signs, adequate lighting of installations, patrolling and intrusion detection for deterrence, expansion of the Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) to remotely monitor the loads and consumption of high consuming Non-Special Load Tariff (NSLT) for early detection of theft.
Source: https://energynewsafrica.com
