Electrical – How to check for electricity theft

if you can get your hands on a TDR (time domain reflectometer) you can use it to measure the distance to the end of the ring from an outlet.

1. turn off the power to the ring and disconnect the hot from both ends at the breaker.
2. using the TDR, measure the length of the hot circuit from where you just disconnected it at the breaker. that is the total circumference of the ring.
3. connect the TDR to the hot of an outlet. the TDR should return two "open" or "end of wire" values. this will tell you how far this outlet is from each end of the ring.
4. back at the consumer unit, take a short piece of wire and temporarily attach it to one of the live wires you disconnected and measured in steps 1 and 2. then remeasure the same outlet from step 3. the new measurements will tell you which "leg" of the ring goes to which wire.
5. repeat step 3 (and step 4 if needed) for each outlet.

Say your electrical bill is $100 a month.

Now say you have a refrigerator, a computer, a window fan and your light bulbs in your house as your only electrical devices. Everything but your light bulbs are on 24/7.

• Fridge: 725W **NOTE MOST FRIDGES DON'T ACTUALLY RUN 24/7 THIS IS JUST FOR EXAMPLE PURPOSES*
• Computer : 125W
• Fan: 150W
• Lights (on 8 hours a day, 100W)

• Fridge, computer and fan on all day = 1000W * 24h = 24kWh
• Lights on 8h a day = 0.8kWh
• Total daily usage = 24.8kWh

In that scenario your lights represent 0.8/24.8 or 3% of your daily electrical consumption.

If you replace your light with a 15W bulb, you've dropped from 24.8kWh to 24.12kWh a day, a savings of only 2.7% of your total daily consumption.

Addendum: I am not saying lighting is going to be 3% of your bill - I'm only making an example. You have to do the math - you have to figure out how much total power you're using (check electric bill) and then how much power your lights use (look at the bulbs and measure how long each one is left on each day) and that's your total % of energy for lighting. If that % is 15 then you can only reduce that 15%. You can cut your lighting costs in half, but half of 15% is only 7.5%.