Uma metodologia para a identificação de perdas não técnicas em grandes consumidores rurais

Abstract

Irrigation of large agricultural areas represents a significant portion of energy consumption in food producing countries. The electric power of irrigation pumps in rice crops, for example, may exceed 800 HP, while these systems are continually used during the harvest. In Brazil, non-technical losses in this type of consumer are generally due to fraud or error in power meters, or illegal connections. This type of problem is difficult to control because of the large length of rural feeder, in addition to access difficulties in many cases. This work presents a proposal for identifying non-technical losses in rural feeders containing pumping systems for irrigation of rice crops. The proposed methodology is based on the correlation of patterns of energy consumption, characteristics of the irrigated area and climatic conditions of the irrigation period. The developed system employs Artificial Neural Network technique, and it has as input a dataset of rainfall, temperature, solar irradiation, humidity, installed power and irrigated area of rice cultivation. The final result of the analysis indicates the percentage risk of each set of data and inconsistencies that can result in non-technical losses. The results of the developed methodology were obtained and validated from a real data base of crops of the period between 2009 and 2014, in the State of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.