Theft springs lucrative business

The theft of electrical power from the distribution networks is costing Electrica approximately $80 million, which are logged as losses every year, says Silviu Lucian Boghiu, Electrica’s general manager.

This year, however, the second largest company on the Romanian market has started taking steps to sharply reduce the amount of power stolen from the network by installing anti-theft systems. Which is bound to spring a business worth millions of dollars a year for the local and international suppliers of such equipment.

“We have already made investments in the high theft rate areas and installed measuring and anti-theft systems. The solution, which is used in the European Union and Canada for instance, is a piece of equipment that serves to contain theft,” Boghiu told Ziarul Financiar.

Boghiu says the equipment in question was imported from Canada, considering the Romanian market only makes it for experimental purposes at the moment.

“We’ve had talks with companies in Romania, which asked us to provide a projection of our equipment needs so that they could size their own production,” Boghiu explains. Electrica has invested 70bn ROL (some 2 million euros) in Toflea (Galati County) and Sintesti (Ilfov County), where it had small transformers installed, an investment set to be recovered in three years.

“Technologically speaking, we take the insulated 20 KV network to every home, where we install a small 5 KVA transformer. This transformer limits the electrical power consumption for household consumers and, on the other hand, the consumers get to pay for what they actually use,” Electrica representatives say. As for those compact areas with a high power theft rate, the next targets on the company’s agenda are Strehaia (Mehedinti County) and certain areas in Bucharest.

Electrica’s management expects the company to make more than 2bn euro turnover this year and break even at the same time. It posted 25 million euros in gross losses for the first eight months of this year, while turnover was of 1.16bn euros.