Reflectometers fight illegal electricity mining
A
Megger product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team
Nov 3, 2008
The latest time domain reflectometers (TDRs) in the TDR2000/2 series from Megger are proving to be an important aid in the battle against illegal extraction of electricity from the supply system.
This is a particular problem in many developing countries.
In some parts of India, for example, it has been estimated that only around 40 per cent of electricity used is actually paid for.
Even in the UK, the cost of illegal electricity usage has recently been quoted as around GBP100m for the last four years.
The favoured method of obtaining 'free' electricity in developing countries is by making an unauthorised connection - usually know as an illegal tap - to the supply network.
Finding the taps by conventional methods - essentially visual inspection - is a difficult and time-consuming business.
Megger TDR2000/2 instruments are designed to make this task much easier and faster.
Though nominally intended to locate faults on power cables, the TDRs can also reveal the presence of illegal taps.
A trace can be taken of a system, stored, and at a later date can then be used as a reference to see if anything has changed.
If an illegal tap has been made it will be shown as an impedance change and there will be a divergence at the point of connection, showing the distance to the illegal tap.
Armed with the knowledge of the distance to the tap, the search area for the illegal connection is greatly reduced.
While the penetration of CCTV and wired telecommunications systems are limited in the developing world, it is worth noting that the use of TDRs is equally applicable to the location of illegal taps in networks of these types.
The Megger TDR2000/2P is a handheld instrument that has data storage and recall to compare a live trace with a stored one.
It can be used on live circuits without the need for external filters, so the electricity supply does not need to be cut off while investigations are being carried out.
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