The reasons of this situation are very different.

In very numerous situations the reason is poverty

and need to provide for the most basic needs. Some reasons however are linked to the
performance of the utility or political connections and corruption environment.
Still many people remain without access to electricity and this is another reason for electricity
theft. This may often happen in slums and generally in poor countries, but also in rural areas
where temporary connections to overhead lines are made for a number of strange purposes
(camping, forestry jobs, exploration and so on).
Electricity theft is often seen as sort of spiral effect. Unbilled electricity cost is charged to
consumers who need to pay more and if they cannot afford it, some of them start to bypass
electrical meters.
Japanese case
It may also happen that the supply had been stopped by utilities because of previous electricity
theft and the victim cannot live without electricity, but equally cannot pay for it. In such a case,
the country's wealth is not a factor.
Canadian case
It may also happen that people steal electricity to remain quiet and anonymous.
US case
Most often, however, the motivation to steal electrical power is the temptation not to pay for the
service, or more often to pay less. This type of electricity theft is present in developed countries
and is not only limited to low income parts of the population.
Many utilities say energy theft has risen sharply during the economic downturn. Culprits include
residential customers whose power is turned off when they fall behind on their bills and small
businesses struggling to keep their doors open.
Legal aspect:
What is the definition of electricity theft?
It is the use of electrical power without a contract with a supplier with total or partial
bypassing metering system or interfering this system in the way to adulterate its
measurements. Contract is understood here as a valid obligation to deliver power and to
pay for it.
This definition, although technically comprehensive enough, is not always univocal for lawyers.
It is extremely important that electricity theft is a criminal law offence which at the best should
be prosecuted ex officio. In most of the cases, it is. However ex officio term has different
shades. In Poland, following the sentence of the Supreme Court, discovering electricity theft (an

object) usually does not require the investigation of a perpetrator (a subject). This means that the
issue of a perpetrator's responsibility will be considered at a later stage of the criminal process,
and that utility is expected to prepare sufficient evidence.
In civil law, the general rule is the duty to compensate the damnification which, in the case of
electricity theft, means the necessity of joint compliance to the following three premises:

there must be either property or nominal damage;

there must be the basic fact of human activity which caused the consequential damage.
The damage alone is not sufficient to incur responsibility;

there must be causality between the human's activity and the damage.

As a summary of all above, a utility itself must find the place of theft and must provide evidence
(protocols, pictures). Local regulations sometimes give the right to utility representatives to enter
a residence to perform the control. In such cases, utilities have an obligation to inform the police
or other official public security institutions about this. It is best if this contact is done in advance
based on well-justified presumption, or immediately after the control has proved positive, as
police assistance mandates utility actions. The police, however, are not always interested in
witnessing uncertain investigations.
There is another approach: dualism in location of meters. The instructions are that meters should
be in easily accessible locations, but they must be very well secured against interference from
third persons.
Good legislation should give utilities the right to stop electricity supply in the case of conviction
without an alternative electricity supply. In such cases, reconnection can be made for a trial
period on the basis of prepay.
In practice, courts may accept many excuses, among which the most popular is that the illegal
connection was done by a technician (sometimes temporarily, but the technician forgot to remove
it or inform owners about it) and contact with this person is no longer possible.

How is electricity being stolen and how can this be

combatted?
The following are some popular methods for stealing electricity:
Bypassing the feeder. Usually the bypass supplies power to large and stable loads which will not
trip fuses in the case of overload. It may be heating or air cooling, i.e. loads providing functions
which may be also supplied in non electrical way. In the case of partial bypass, the rest of the
circuits are supplied normally through the meter, so the bill, which is close to average, does not
suggest a theft. The most efficient way to fight against such cases is to partner with crime
stoppers. Nobody else knows better how people are powering their devices than neighbours. In
Poland, for example, there are specialised agencies hired by utilities which start local

investigations from buying a number of drinks in a bar to men who want to say how much they
know about the secrets of a local community.
Another common form of electricity theft is to invert the meter (pull the meter out of the socket
and plug the meter back in upside down, which causes the meter to run backwards and the kWh
register to go down instead of up). The user leaves the meter inverted for a number of days to
shave usage off of the bill and the meter is then reinstalled before a meter reading. GE and others
in the industry have historically employed tamper detection tools to alert utilities that a meter is
inverted. GE patented a method to prevent it.
Particularly recently, a popular way to slow down a meter is the use of strong permanent magnets
like rare earth neodymium magnets (for instance previously disassembled from old hard disks).
In induction meters, a number of torques are balanced to get optimum linear characteristics. One
of them comes from permanent magnet (N-S) braking the aluminium disc (Al).
Neodymium magnets installed close to rotating discs may effectively boost braking torque. After
removing this magnet, the meter starts to rotate much faster so having already saved a lot",
users complain about extortious reading. Fortunately, utilities found a way to distinguish between
malfunctioning meters and those previously treated with neodymium.
Finally, a great promise for combatting this problem is smart meters. The meters, with
integrated billing functions, provide real time energy balance. This balance helps to detect illegal
load almost immediately and in most of the cases to narrow investigation to just one low voltage
circuit. Smart meters are far more expensive in developing countries like India, however, as
electricity theft is so much the problem there they could be particularly helpful. This article is
about this promise.
These examples provided by Public-Private Partnership of the World Bank, by no means
exhaustive, of innovative initiatives to address non-technical losses by sector