Modelling of Distribution Losses in an Urban Environment and Strategies for Distribution Loss Reduction

Minimising distribution losses shall be one of the key objectives of a distribution electric utility, even though they do not constitute major operational or quality of supply problems. The negative impact of distribution losses on the economics of utility operation is often passed down as costs to customers. The percentage of distribution losses is one of the important indicators to evaluate the performance of a distribution electric utility, network. Distribution losses in an electric utility are two fold viz. technical losses(TL) and non-technical losses (NTL). Technical and non-technical losses require continuous efficient management by utilities to ascertain the factors responsible for them and to take corrective actions to minimize them. The investment needed to reduce technical losses is significantly high compared with investment needed to reduce non-technical losses. This implies that the utilities may have to concentrate on nontechnical loss reduction prior to reducing technical losses. The main scope of this paper is to formulate a strategy to minimize distribution losses in the Electricity Distribution Network of an Urban Environment. This paper, describes the causes for the distribution losses and quantifies technical losses and non-technical losses at each level of the distribution network with the development of an energy flow diagram. Computation of the optimum level of distribution losses for an urban distribution network has also been presented, with the barriers and the strategies for distribution loss reduction, are discussed.