Electricity Theft Is Rampant, but Delhi Found a Fix

It’s disheartening how much power gets generated and then promptly lost as it travels through grid networks. This leaking of electricity happens when it vanishes as heat as well as when it is pilfered by thieves and nonpaying customers.

More than half of the countries that track these metrics lost at least 10 percent of their electricity in 2023, according to the World Bank. Losses topped 20 percent for 24 of those nations. Two countries lost more than half of what they generated.

With numbers this high, cutting down on losses makes sense. Electricity demand is rising beyond what many grid operators can supply; reducing waste would help meet some of that demand without having to build new power plants. Plus, when the power comes from fossil fuels, any loss means emitting even more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. And electric losses hit the bottom lines of power providers, which ultimately pass those costs on to everyone else.

The trouble is, reducing electricity losses is a hard and expensive process that takes a long time. Typically, the less maintained the grid infrastructure, the more electricity that’s lost. And the more fragile the region’s law enforcement and government, the more prevalent the power theft. Natural disasters and war make things worse.

Fixing a power grid requires a systemic approach across many sectors. There’s no one technology that will solve the problem. At the outset, the obstacles to success may feel insurmountable. Equipment across entire grid networks must be updated. Multiple arms of government must agree to reforms and coordinate to ensure power providers are set up to succeed. Regulations must be written or revised, investments made, cultures changed.

The city of Delhi did all those things. Over the past 25 years, it cut its electricity losses from about 50 to 5 percent. How the city pulled off that impressive feat is the focus of “The Epic Comeback of Delhi’s Power Grid” by Mini Shaji Thomas, an electrical engineer at the university Jamia Millia Islamia who has lived in Delhi since the 1990s. She gives us a view from the inside—as a resident and a power systems expert.

Delhi is a shining example, but some other regions have significantly lowered electricity losses over the last quarter century too. The country of Georgia went from losses of over 16 percent in 2002 to about 8 percent in 2023. In Singapore, losses dropped from 6.6 percent to a nearly nonexistent 0.2 percent over the same time period.

Global Electricity Theft Crisis

But there are many parts of the world where electricity losses remain a problem or have gotten worse. In Jamaica, where power theft is rampant, losses have hovered between 21 and 28 percent for years. Argentina’s losses nearly doubled between 2015 and 2023, going from an all-time low of about 12 percent to an all-time high of nearly 24 percent. The main problem: Transmission and distribution companies lacked the capital to maintain and upgrade their networks, which left equipment operating under stress. A delay in the installation of smart meters has allowed thieves to more easily siphon power and tamper with meters.

Thomas says she hopes her account of Delhi’s grid comeback will serve as a blueprint for others. It’s possible to replicate the sweeping changes Delhi made, she says. But it “requires a concerted effort from all stakeholders, customers, the utility, the government, and their employees.”