1. Struggling to Pull the Plug on Energy Theft with AMR Technology
Presented By: Clayton Dean
Tampa Electric Company

2. Some Things Never Change
Someone once said “If it has any value – someone will attempt to steal it”.
Electricity is NOT exempt from this theory and the problem is not something new for utilities.
As early as 1899, the Edison Illuminating Companies dealt with the problem of tampering with screws that adjusted meter damping magnets.

3. What is Tampering?
Energy theft involves interfering with the true and accurate registration of an electric revenue meter.
1. Actual meter tampering to avoid proper registration of power consumption.
2. Meter diversion bypassing energy around the meter to avoid registration of actual consumption.

4. Impact of Tampering to Utilities
Estimates vary across the industry on the actual cost of theft
Normal estimates range from 2-4% of retail revenues
Estimated losses between $4-6 billion dollars annually
Conservative estimates since energy theft is mostly “out of sight” and unfortunately “out of mind”

5. Life Before AMR
Before AMR deployment we did things the “old-fashioned” way to identify tampering.
Meter Readers and Field Employees provided leads for tampering cases (Nearly 6,000 reported tampering issues annually)
Broken Meter Seal Reports
Suspected Current Diversion Reports
Low Consumption Reports
Anonymous Tips
Area sweeps by Revenue Protection Employees
Inspect and Reseal Activity

6. Opening the Door to Tampering
No meter readers mean no more “eyes in the field”
Who will notice the problem?
Jumpers in meter sockets
Unsealed metering equipment
Mechanical tampering (TAPS)

7. Investigation Challenges
Tampering investigations are impacted by the same obstacles that created problems for our meter readers.
Accessing the meter (locked gates, dogs, detection of employees)
Customers become suspicious of field visits
Tampering NOT usually a Monday-Friday 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM event
Field employees cases referrals provided us with nearly 90% of our case activity

8. Tamper Flags – Now What?
AMR technology arrived without the playbook on how to address the detection of tampering and the large volume of tamper flags associated with the technology.
Volume of tamper flags immediately unmanageable
Challenge of filtering tamper codes against work orders, outages, and multiple systems that generate meter work
Needed technology to manage tampering data
Field employee case referrals down 85% from 2008 to 2012
Nearly 80% of field checks using tamper code reports were invalid

9. New Methods of Tampering
Mechanical manipulation still a problem
Jumpers behind meter to reduce use
Unplugging ERT’s for part of the month
Inner seal broken to gain access to meter components
Intermittent bypass being engaged
Unauthorized demand resets

10. AMR Tampering Examples
With AMR technology we initially focused on the obvious issues (multiple tamper codes) and found immediate success.
Example of an account with 6 consecutive months of tamper flags.
Premise view of meter and meter can at service address
Electronic check (handheld collector) could not communicate with assigned meter

11. AMR Tampering Examples
Customer utilizing a stolen meter between scheduled meter reading dates to reduce monthly account consumption.

12. AMR Tampering Examples
Meter can latch has a disguised cut to allow seal to be removed without cutting the meter seal.

13. AMR Tampering Examples
The customer was hiding a marijuana cultivation operation.
Normal marijuana operations utilize an illegal tap, but this customer was keeping it simple and taking out the meter between meter read dates.

14. AMR Tampering Examples
We recovered our correct meter in a dryer located behind the home.

15. AMR Tampering Examples
Not all tampering was as obvious as multiple tampering flags.
As our understanding of the AMR technology improved, we found it only takes ONE tamper flag for the damage to be done.
Example of an overhead tap on an inactive account.

16. AMR Tampering Examples
Homemade connection of overhead tap.

17. AMR Tampering Examples
Wires feeding from tap into premise breaker panel.

18. AMR Tampering Examples
Tap feeding into hole at weather head.

19. AMR Tampering Examples
Correct meter assigned to premise reading the same monthly read for 13 months.
Only ONE tamper flag registered to allow tampering to occur.

20. AMR Tampering Examples
More examples of accounts that only recorded ONE tamper flag to facilitate theft.
Using “jumpers” behind meter to reduce monthly consumption or to avoid registration of all use.

21. Jumpers Continued

22. Jumpers Continued

23. ERT Tampering
While most tampering issues are fairly common with jumpers and stolen meters, we knew it was only a matter of time before they found a way to disable the meter.
Removing or disconnecting the contacts (ERT) inside the meter will result in a “blank screen” condition and the appearance of a damaged meter.

24. ERT Tampering
Continued view of disconnected ERT.

25. Lessons Learned
Make sure Revenue Protection is involved in AMR/AMI project.
Understand conflicting priorities for Meter Engineering and Revenue Protection.
Prioritize Revenue Protection as an asset and not an inconvenience to the project.
Understand the technology available to identify tampering.

26. Improved Technology with AMI
A wealth of new information now available.
Improved education on tampering specific issues.
Load profile info can show usage drop-offs.
Intermittent bypass being engaged
Low/no use during business hours?
Event logs track dozens of event types.
Unreported “outages”
Unauthorized demand resets
Load profile data more robust to identify tampering such as jumpers