How To Determine Illegal Electricity Consumption On Your Meter | You could be paying for neighbors usage

Illegal electricity consumption: The bad news is that anyone can illegally consume electricity on your meter without your knowledge. The illegal electricity consumption on your meter can be done by neighbors in compound houses. The occurrence of illegal consumption of electricity on your meter can sometimes be done voluntarily or without the knowledge of the person consuming the electricity.

But the phenomenon of illegal consumption of electricity is common in slum communities where it is difficult to trace electricity wire connections.

The experience of this writer is that he had contracted an electrician to install a separate meter for him. However, for whatever reason, the electrician could not do the separation properly, leading to a situation where certain electrical sockets and lights are consuming electricity from different meters other than the ones they are supposed to consume from.

The reason for the inability of the electrician was that he did not have the luxury of time to call or wait for a carpenter to come to open portions of the ceiling in the rooms for him to have access to certain wires. In his estimation, so far as the bulb in one room and one socket in another room are used from their opposite meters, the cost would balance out. The electrician had forgotten that the rate of usage or intensity of use would greatly influence the cost involved. For example, imagine a light bulb which is mostly used in the night is assumed to balance a socket that could be used from morning to evening to watch either television or to power a fan, especially when the tenant lives mostly at home.

Another point of interest is that, through investigation, it was realized that multiple power points like sockets and bulbs are using other people’s meters rather than the ones for their respective rooms. Funny enough, the tenants in those rooms are new tenants and have no idea how the connections were made. You would agree that the new tenants would be using other people’s meters without their knowledge.

It is for this reason, as tenants in a new compound or house, you investigate whether someone is consuming electricity from your meter illegally with or without their knowledge. As indicated earlier, even the landlords may not even be aware of any of the illegal connections if they do not investigate themselves or the electrician is not honest enough to inform the landlord about any modifications made to the wiring or separation of meters.

The first approach to determine illegal consumption on your meter is to do a solo investigation. With this approach, you turn off the main switch on your meter when your neighbors are around and using electricity. When you turn off your switch, anyone who has any electricity consumption point on your meter will have that consumption point turned off as well. If such a neighbor is not already aware of the anomaly in the wiring, he or she would come out to ask if there was a light or to complain about an electrical fault at that point. You could as well enquire about any such complaint whenever you turn off your meter. But remember to inform your neighbors directly on the same meter with you to avoid any electrical problems with their gadgets. The disadvantage of this method also is that your neighbors’ gadgets could be at risk if they are actually consuming from your meter.

The second approach is to turn off your meter while traveling for days. With this approach, even if they bring an electrician to resolve any issue, they there would not be power until you return. Neighbors with good relations will open up about the miracle of your return, which returned their power to them.

The final approach is to bring together all the neighbors in the same compound to investigate any issues in the wiring system that could create a situation where tenants are consuming electricity from each other’s meter.

In conclusion, neighbors can be illegally consuming electricity from each other’s meter with or without their knowledge. Tenants have the ultimate responsibility to verify whether someone is consuming electricity from their meter. Otherwise, such a tenant will be paying the electricity bill for their neighbors. | Illegal electricity consumption

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