Another gas explosion in the news.

ChumpusRex

Pincher wrote: »

This is something I don't understand. If a substation registers 1,000 m3 used, but the sum of all the domestic meters is 600 m3, so there is a leak or by-pass theft, who pays for the difference? Obviously, the suppliers will be a mix of BG, E.On, Scottish Power, Ovo, etc. , so who pays? Also, the suppliers could argue that it's a leak, so why should they pay?

What happens is changed from time to time. The way that I think it currently works is as follows (disclaimer: not my line of work, so may be mistaken)

In general, missing energy tends to get absorbed by the DNO or gas transporter. This then gets added to their costs that they charge to the energy suppliers.

If, however, a supplier instigates an RP investigation and subsequently rebills the customer, then they themselves get rebilled for the energy under the national balancing/settlement system. (The balancing and settlement system is essentially the system whereby energy sold is divided up amongst the suppliers - it uses a massive database of meter readings which are then matched up with the database of suppliers, how much energy each supplier had pre-ordered from each power station, how much energy each supplier sold, how much energy each power station agreed to supply and how much they actually supplied, were there any discrepancies between these numbers, etc. and works out who owes what and to whom.)

As you can see, this has a rather perverse incentive. If the supplier ignores the theft, then the cost of the theft gets diluted amongs all the suppliers. If they detect it, then they must pay for the energy used themselves, unless they can recover the cost of the energy/investigation from the customer.

It's hardly surprising that with incentives like these, the energy suppliers themselves tend to need considerable goading to investigate energy theft.

Things get even more complicated when you consider that DNOs, meter operators, revenue protection services, suppliers, etc. may have various levels of integration within individual companies or groups.

[Deleted User]

Thanks ChumpusRex, thats similar to what Terry outlined a few years ago.We certainly get no incentives for discovering electricity theft. BG even withdrew their £10 incentive payment, although it remains for gas at £10, and business gas at £50. When I find an electric meter bypass, BG RPU will usually pass it on to a couple of poorly trained G4S meter readers to go along to the property to stop the bypass. They dont have the power or warrants of the RPU men and from what I have been told by one of them, they may simply tell the occupier to remove the bypass and leave it at that. This all makes me very suspicious that the suppliers dont really want to get involved in stopping electric theft, mainly because they will have to make good the losses themselves when they fail to get it back from the occupiers as they surely will. Gas is a different matter with BG, they are very keen to stop it, probably because Centrica produce it, and will obtain warrant quickly and get in and stop it.
The other suppliers I deal with, EDF/Scot Power I get zero feedback when I email their RPU officeabout tampers and bypass, and never know if anything is actioned. An EDF electric meter bypass I found in Goole, in a very dangerous state, which I sent into their RPU by email, with photograph , they definitely did nt stop it. Three months later I got into the property to read the meter again and nothing had been done, live wires and bare live screws were still open on view at ground level where kids were playing . Pretty scandalous in my opinion. Ofgem got a photo of this to remind them this is how some suppliers operate.