Wouldnt that mean rented properties would get a heck of a lot of visits? Every time a new tenant moves in, use is liable to change by over 15%. But since they dont even read the meters often anyway, I guess they wont pick it up so often.
The short version of all this is there are many ways to cheat electricity companies, but a) few people know any, b) theyre illegal, and the perp may get caught and done, just like any other crime. The ability to do it doesnt mean theyll get away with it. c) The technology keeps changing to make many old methods not work.
Did anyone else see the TV programme recently about the electricity distribution company Telasi in Tblisi, Georgia which had been bought by the American group AES.
Basically it had become the norm there to hook up your own supply either on the wrong side of the meter or preferrably after someone elses meter. In some cases supplies were rigged up via cables dangling from the substation, meters not even coming into the equation - nor fuses from the look of some of the 'installations'.
The programme focussed on the efforts of the company to get at least some of the customers to pay for at least some of the electricity used. which was a bit of an impossible taks without disconnecting most of the households in the city. The whole thing was not helped by the corruption of state officials, who would take bribes from large local businesses (which had not paid their electricity bills) to order the grid control centres to swith power on to the factories in preference to domestic customers who had paid!
Same in parts of India. And therefore I assume most of the RoW (apart from China possibly where they have suitable punishments for such crimes). Many electricity poles appeared to have two wires to most houses, one fairly official looking, the other rather 'floppy' shall we say. Presumably a quick pull and it would come loose if needed.
No they don't, unless things have changed in the last few years. The cabinets are supplies at no cost by the companies for builders or the householders to install, but remain their property.
Reminds me of a program I saw about supplies in South Africa: the supply distribution points are in the street in public view, surrounded by armoured steel, and the leccy company only dares to go tend to them with a truck full of armed guards.
I know nothing about Tblisi, but would it not be practical to go round removing these connections 1 by 1 en masse? The simple principles being
1 its far quicker to remove than to reinstall
2 they need lose no sleep over disconnecting those with illegal supplies
"N. Thornton" wrote | clever, but how does this work with tenants? Suppose they fit | such a unit so the offender just moves elsewhere. Suppose | theyre the dole dwelling type who almost no-one can find as | they move so often. And even when you do find them theyve | got nothing anyway, having spent it all on drugs. Those kinda | folk are hard to extract anything from, short of violence. | Even courts order payback rates so pathetic theyre | often not worth the expense of prosecution. | How do you deal with those?
Give the neds a social worker to help them Deal With Their Challenging Issues :-)
A friend in Russia says the only profitable utility company is the mobile phone co as they almost insist on Pay As You Go for most Russians (except those owning London football clubs one assumes).
In that case, my house must confuse the hell out of them...
At some point it was split into four 1 bedroom flats, two with electric heating, the other two with gas. Then in the late '90s the previous owners to me bought it, and converted it back into one dwelling again. They neglected to fit any decent sort of heating system though, using a motley collection of electric fires all over the house, and ripping the old gas heaters out. Each flat had had a separate electric supply and meter, with an additional one for the lighting in the communal hallway. The additional 4 meters were eventually removed, with everything then being connected into the meter formerly used by 'Flat A' - my utility bills still arrive addressed to 'Flat A' even now.
When I bought the house I fitted gas central heating, meaning that the gas consumption rose by about five fold in the winter, while the quarterly electricity bill plummeted from about £250 to £45. I then took in a couple of friends as lodgers for a few months, the gas bill went even higher as a result, and the electric bill went back up a bit. By the time they moved out I was working away from home for a while so the house was hardly occupied - gas and electric bills both dropped way back down to not much above the standing charge.
Even after all this shenanigans no one at either gas or electricity suppliers has ever queried why the usage has fluctuated so much, and the electric meter hasn't even been read for about 3 years. It just shows what it would be possible to get away with....
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