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JPS's CEO Damian Obligio is on a campaign to curb electricity theft.

John Myers, Business Reporter

Having already announced plans to introduce "smart" meters so that it can better track the electricity consumption of its biggest clients, Jamaica Public Service (JPS) says it is spending another half a billion dollars on technology that will help to curb theft by its residential and small commercial clients.

"We are going to be doing an upgrade in our electricity grid and we are bringing some technology from Brazil and Argentina with anti-theft constructions that are going to be installed in all the troubled areas that we have in the island," said the company's CEO, Damian Obligio.

JPS is the primary producer of electricity for the national grid and has a monopoly on the transmission and distribution of power in the island.

The company estimates its transmission loss at around 13 per annually, the bulk of which is stolen. Transmission loss costs the company an estimated US$57 million (J$4 billion) a year.

It is in its efforts to reduce electricity theft, even as it enhances the management of its systems, that JPS is now investing heavily in new technologies.

Last week, the company announced a US$2.3 million ($164.5 million) contract with the United States-based Trilliant Networks Inc. to set up an advanced meter infrastructure (AMI) for its approximately 6,000 priority commercial and industrial customers.

"Large customers will have intelligent meters that will be read online by JPS," Obligio said. "We will be able to monitor the consumption of all the customers so that we can help them to analyse how they can reduce their consumption, and it is going to help us to identify who is tampering with the meter of JPS."

Now, JPS is looking to South America, with similar problems to Jamaica's with electricity theft, for solutions at the household and small-business level.

The company says it is investing US$8 million (J$570 million) in the technology that will include the installation of new types of meters, with remote display panels, that can be monitored from JPS facilities.

"With the use of electronic meters and remote-communication technology, these meters will be remotely and automatically read and also disconnected and reconnected for non-payment of electricity bills," JPS explained.

Limit meter tampering

The new technology is expected to significantly limit incidence of meter tampering as well as 'throw-ups' and other forms of illegal connections to JPS's low-voltage network that serves residential and small commercial customers. Eight thousand meters are expected to be installed by next March under the first phase of the project.

Until now, detecting illegal connections and other forms of electricity theft has been largely a physical, difficult and time-consuming process carried out by JPS technicians. Some 23,000 illegal connections have been removed by the company so far this year.

"Brazil has been very successful in reducing the losses ... So, we are bringing that technology here," Obligio said.