The Challenge of Non-Technical Loss Detection using Artificial
  Intelligence: A Survey
  Detection of non-technical losses (NTL) which include electricity theft,
faulty meters or billing errors has attracted increasing attention from
researchers in electrical engineering and computer science. NTLs cause
significant harm to the economy, as in some countries they may range up to 40%
of the total electricity distributed. The predominant research direction is
employing artificial intelligence to predict whether a customer causes NTL.
This paper first provides an overview of how NTLs are defined and their impact
on economies, which include loss of revenue and profit of electricity providers
and decrease of the stability and reliability of electrical power grids. It
then surveys the state-of-the-art research efforts in a up-to-date and
comprehensive review of algorithms, features and data sets used. It finally
identifies the key scientific and engineering challenges in NTL detection and
suggests how they could be addressed in the future.
