By Satish Saini, HEXstream utilities industry specialist  

Energy and power systems are the backbone of our economy. And as you know, these systems are vast, complex and expensive, comprised of disparate segments for power generation, transmission, distribution, and—ultimately—consumption by consumers. 

Current domestic energy is generated by various means:  

· Fossil fuels (coal, gas, oil) where power plants burn these fuels to generate electricity 

· Nuclear plants use nuclear reactions to produce heat that is used to generate electricity 

· Renewable methods that create energy via solar, wind, hydro, geothermal and biomass means 

Once generated, energy is transmitted from power sources to populated areas—oftentimes between regions or states—at high voltage levels with the goal of limiting losses.  

And that’s what we’re exploring here today: energy loss. Or more specifically, transmission and distribution energy losses. T&D energy losses, for short.  

Accurate energy-accounting systems are needed to properly mitigate energy loss. These systems should be in place throughout the process—right from the supply source all the way to the end consumers locations, where actual revenue is earned from sale of electricity. Energy accounting applies to all business and operations arrangements in the energy market, that may be the centralized utility market consisting of power generation, transmission and distribution. This is all under one umbrella. Alternate systems exist in deregulated markets, where there are suppliers at one end and other utilities managing transmission and distribution segments in their territories to supply power to end consumers. 

An accurate energy-accounting system needs proper analytics to find gaps between energy supplied by the generators, energy received by the T&D utilities, and energy distributed and billed to the end consumers. Any gaps are reported as the energy losses from supply to billed or “T&D energy losses.” These losses refer to the amount of electricity that is generated/ or received by the utility but does is not accounted for at the end consumers due to inefficiencies within the transmission and distribution systems’ operation and management. 

These T&D energy losses can be categorized into two main categories: 

1. Technical losses, which occur naturally in power systems due to the physical properties of huge electrical infrastructure, equipment and devices. These losses are primarily caused by some physical or electrical properties of the equipment, devices and infrastructure such as the materials in use or the resistance, length, loading for transformation through step up / step down transformers. For most electrical systems, these losses are not huge. 

2. Non-Technical losses, which are not related to the physical transmission and distribution of electricity but instead result from external factors such as human actions or errors. These losses are often more difficult to quantify and control, as they are caused by electricity theft, metering inaccuracies and billing errors.  

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AND CLICK HERE TO READ THE NEXT INSTALLMENT IN THIS SERIES, FOCUSED ON THE FALLOUT FROM ENERGY LOSSES.