Artificial Intelligence to Detect Electricity Theft

Electricity shortage is the biggest challenge that many countries are facing these days. Often, it is found that electricity theft is the reason behind this commonly growing issue. Thus, scientists have developed a new artificial intelligence (AI) system that can detect electricity theft and meter misreading.

As per the experts, electricity theft is a huge problem; some countries see as much as 40 percent of their supply siphoned off. This problem is created by the users who have tampered with meters, researchers said. The scientists specifically shed the lights on nearly 200 million monthly readings made by professional meter readers. After sifting through the reading, the scientists created an algorithm that could recognize when energy use at a property was suspiciously low.

The researchers demonstrated their results with data on past inspections checking if their tool was correctly highlighting potential cases of fraud or faulty metering. As per the researchers, the most accurate versions of the system were able to recognize problem cases just over 65 percent of the time.

By Priyanka Negi

Content: www.newindianexpress.com