Energy Companies Will Be Forced to Prevent Theft

According to new regulations that have been announced, energy companies in the UK are going to be charged with the task of detecting and preventing all theft of energy in the country. This includes the Big Six energy companies such as British Gas and npower.

Energy theft is a growing problem in the UK. This likely has to do with the fact that energy prices are on the rise. Usually this happens when someone uses another person?s energy without their permission. Unfortunately for the victims, they normally do not even know that this is happening until they receive a huge energy bill.

However, it no longer looks like the companies are going to be able to sit by and just watch this happen. This new regulation will see energy companies fined for not stepping in and investigating such problems. In some cases, these companies could even lose their licenses to supply energy in the UK.

Ministers in the UK say that the energy industry detects more than 25,000 cases of energy theft a year. To make matters worse, very few energy companies try to deter this. After all, the more energy that is used, the more money they make. In the end, this cost is a total of ?200 million a year. That equals about an extra ?7 per household. The government also believes that stopping energy theft will hurt cannabis farms across the country.

According to Ofgem, one-third of all the power in the country that is stolen is being used by cannabis farms. These kinds of farms use more than 40 times the power of a normal household. For example, a typical cannabis farm grows around 500 plants. To do this, it would need close to 80 lights switched on for at least 12 hours. If these cannabis farms do not steal energy from other homes, it makes them stand out on the power grid because they are using so much energy. By taking some from other houses, it makes their energy use look normal.

Due to this new rule, energy companies are now going to be required to set up a ?National Theft Risk Assessment Service.? This new service is going to be designed to help target homes that people believe are stealing power. On top of that, these companies are also going to have to set up a 24-hour hotline and coordinate all of their efforts with the Home Office.

Tags: big six, British Gas, energy theft, Npower

This entry was posted on Friday, July 5th, 2013 at 8:17 am and is filed under Regulation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Source: http://www.electric.co.uk/news/energy-companies-will-be-forced-to-prevent-theft-12342708.html

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