Bihar Partners with Bidgely to Combat Energy Theft with AI-Powered Analytics
Bihar State Power Holding Company Limited (BSPHCL) has adopted Bidgely’s AI-powered Energy Theft Solution to enhance its strategies for detecting energy theft and preventing revenue leakage. This collaboration marks BSPHCL as the first state utility in India to utilize advanced AI to address theft-related and commercial losses.
Bidgely’s AI technology analyzes smart meter data to identify anomalous behaviors and patterns in consumer energy usage. Within just one month of implementation, the system flagged over 136 potential cases of theft. Subsequent inspections confirmed tariff misuse in 63% of cases, while 51% of meter bypassing and night theft leads were accurate, resulting in successful bookings in 41% of these cases. Overall, 57% of flagged cases led to action.
Sanjeev Hans, CMD at BSPHCL, stated, "Investing in smart meters was the first step in modernizing our understanding of energy consumption. Leveraging AI/ML data analytics takes us to the next level, enabling us to address revenue leakage, demand forecasting, energy accounting, distribution network planning for grid assets, and more without relying on additional monitoring hardware or consumer indexing. Partnering with Bidgely allows us to unlock the full value of AI/ML-driven data analytics for Bihar."
Bidgely’s AI approach differs from traditional theft detection methods, which identify theft from feeder to transformer and finally to the customer level. Instead, Bidgely processes data at the individual level more quickly, revealing patterns consistent with meter bypassing, heavy appliance bypassing, night theft, meter tampering, and tariff misuse. This ensures more effective revenue protection by reducing the need for extensive manual intervention.
Bidgely demonstrated its Energy Theft Solution at India’s Powerthon 2022, a hackathon organized by the Ministry of Power, REC Ltd., and SINE incubation lab of IIT Bombay. The targeted approach will help Bihar achieve greater loss reduction and equip field officers with precise leads, reducing dependence on accurate consumer indexing.
"Energy theft accounts for nearly 20 to 30 percent of revenue loss for India’s state utilities, yet current strategies to plug leakages and book theft only yield 10 to 20 percent results," said Abhay Gupta, CEO of Bidgely. "By leveraging AI technologies, BSPHCL can detect energy theft faster and with greater precision, leading to significant revenue savings and enhanced consumer services."
