The Hindu : IT initiatives to check power theft

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jun 20, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Andhra Pradesh-Hyderabad

IT initiatives to check power theft

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD June 19. As part of the efforts to improve services to consumers and control power theft, the Southern Power Distribution Company of Andhra Pradesh Ltd has launched a series of information technology initiatives in its jurisdiction.

The company has recently tested the First Information Report Indexing, one of the major software support system enabling officials to have better control over day-to-day activities, which helps in tracking of information pertaining to theft cases right from the registration of complaint till the completion of the case. The FIR Indexing was developed in-house by the SPDCL IT team and it facilitates case-wise, crime-wise, mode of offence wise, ERO-wise and assessment-wise tracking of cases online.

Explaining the salient features of the software, the Transco joint managing director (Vigilance), K. Durgaprasad, and SPDCL chairman and managing director, K. Ranganathan, said that the software provides for quick retrieval of information about the cases for analysis and further action. The software would also help officials generate reports pertaining to any case and initiative necessary action on them.

Another major initiative launched by the SPDCL, according to them, was the Common Billing Software which was developed at a par with the standards prescribed by the APERC and provides for a better billing system among the private accounting agencies and the ERO offices. The software contains consumer management, meter readings, bill processing, collection management and reports which were yielding fruitful results in checking theft and increasing revenues to the SPDCL.

In addition, the SPDCL IT team also started implementing the consumer indexing project, a first of its kind project based on the Geographical Information Systems, which gives scope to the company to have pole-wise and transformer-wise information about the services including their exact location. The software would go a long way in ensuring proper supply and rectifying mistakes in the earliest possible time by locating the troublesome areas, they said.

This apart, the SPDCL also took steps to computerise the inventory management which helped the company get effective control on the material purchases, receipts and related issues pertaining to the stocks. The software developed by the SPDCL would be replicated in all the Discoms to have effective monitoring of purchases and their utilisation, according to Mr. Durgaprasad. He said that with the SPDCL taking up IT initiatives on a large scale, the revenue realisation from the company had shown significant increase besides registering a decrease in power theft. To make the services more effective, the district data centres had also been commissioned with an aim to give a better circle level control on demand and revenue collections, he added.

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