Low Voltage Service Line Energy Theft Detection Method Independent of Cable Parameters

This letter presents a Solution to Identify Energy Thefts (SID) in low voltage (LV) service lines. SID’s operation principle does not require user-defined settings related to the electrical and physical characteristics of the inspected cables, being suitable for service lines composed by separate phase and neutral conductors. The algorithm embedded in SID evaluates phase and neutral voltage step responses when the service line is open. It allows to capture transient patterns which contain information on the presence or not of fraudulent branches connected to the phase conductor, even if fraudulent loads are turned off (i.e., when only the illegal cable is connected to the service line without a current flowing through it). To validate SID, 13700 tests divided into 137 scenarios with 100 repetitions each are carried out in real experimental LV single- and three-phase service lines built in an open-air laboratory environment, considering different cables with different lengths, and fraudulent branches connected at different points, with different dimensions. The obtained results attest a very promising performance of SID, which was able to provide correct decisions in 100% of the tested cases. Given the great economical and technical impacts of energy thefts, these results reveal SID as a powerful tool for utilities interested in enhancing inspection procedures of LV service lines.