ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Copper Theft Penalty

The high voltage lines behind my house have a unique solution for this. The grounding conductor is cast inside the concrete poles. I will have to get look at the concrete poles by the side of the road.

Just checked my emails and found a follow up email from our local utility call center saying "the district office is aware of the problem and a large number of cables have been cut in the district."

I wonder if these guys do the thefts in broad daylight as most people would not question somebody with a hard hat, reflective vest, ladder and unmarked truck with all the contracting out going on.

They could use microdots. These are impossible to entirely remove and ensure that thieves or fences can be caught, even if they chip the copper. Though once the avenue for turning scrap into cash is curtailed, the problem will move elewhere, unfortunately.
http://www.hpicheck.com/theftguard.html

You'd have to put microdots along the entire length of the actual copper conductor and every single wire would have to be registered somehow, at least the owner needs to keep track of the numbers. I really can't see that being used on a large scale. If only one end of the conductor is microdotted, thieves will soon know that, check for microdots using a blacklight and cut the offending short piece of copper away.

Forcing all scrap yards to only accept dotted copper would be an even bigger effort, besides, there will be un-dotted old copper wires for quite some time.