Around $24 million is lost each year at the Bahamas Electricity Corporation, to technical and non-technical bleeding that includes everything from inadequate systems to power theft by customers, Guardian Business has learned.
In its 2010-2014 Country Strategy for The Bahamas report, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) wanted to reduce the combined level of technical and non-technical losses to 20 percent from 25 per cent by 2014. It’s now a goal the government has already achieved, with an apparent 14 percent reduction made over the last three years.
Moss says out of that 11 percent of total power lost that was generated by the company, 8 percent – or $17 million – has been calculated for technical losses, which is the customary unavoidable loss of electricity companies stemming from power transmission on the grid. The other 3 percent is the controllable element under the non-technical losses category that also includes meter tampering, electricity theft and inaccurate billing from improper account setups.
That category itself makes up about $7 million in losses at BEC.
