“About 10 percent of the power produced is lost this way,” he said.
“I can tell you that if we can find more of the power that is being stolen or if power thieves can be prosecuted to discourage theft, then we can definitely lower the rates,” he told Variety.
Georgetown Consulting Group, the Commonwealth Public Utilities Commission regulatory consultant, said in a report to CPUC that CUC’s unaccounted for energy losses exceeded 12 percent of its total energy production.
“This means somewhere between 4 to 6 percent of all electricity produced at CUC is not producing revenue or is not being properly accounted for,” Georgetown said.
It said the net impact on electric customers is a higher levelized energy adjustment clause, or LEAC charge.
Malae said the LEAC was computed in May and then adjusted as better information was received by CUC’s consultants.
Georgetown believes that CUC can achieve significant reduction in its high line loss and unaccounted for energy levels.
“Just as CUC brought resources to focus on resolving the power plant rehabilitation issues, CUC should deploy similar resources to bring…unaccounted for energy and losses into compliance with industry norms,” Georgetown said.
KEMA Consulting was tasked by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Office of Insular Affairs to analyze CUC’s technical losses resulting from its delivery system infrastructure, and it estimated these to be less than 6 percent.
“This implies that CUC has non-technical losses [metering, meter reading, theft, customer information system, billing and other back-office issues] that account for another 6 to 7 percent,” Georgetown said. “This is a significant finding.”
