Zira (Ferozepur), February 17 In what could show light at the end of the tunnel to power-starved Punjab State Electricity Board (PSEB), which spends more than about Rs 2 crore daily to bridge the demand and supply gap of electricity in the state, a village in Ferozepur district is fast on its way to become the first village of the state, and perhaps of the country, to earn the distinction of a power theft-free village. Notably, besides the unavoidable transmission and distribution losses, power thefts give a tough time to PSEB in terms of losses. In just four months after a pilot project aimed at energy conservation and checking theft was initiated in October 2007, Dhanna Shaheed village in Zira tehsil of Ferozepur district today boasts of registering energy conservation of 60 per cent. From an alarming figure of losing 81 per cent units of power as unbilled, which also included transmission and distribution losses, from April to September last year, there has been a total turnaround in four months flat, with PSEB reducing the tally of unbilled units to about 21 per cent in the village having 164 meters. "We replaced low-tension lines with high-tension lines, installed seven additional transformers, put a number of pillar boxes which housed the power meters in a lock and used PVC for providing electricity to houses. In short, we plugged all possible loopholes to check power thefts,' said Jagtar Singh, PSEB Senior Executive Engineer (Operations), posted at Zira and who played a key role in actualising the project. The alarm bells rang when the PSEB tabulated data for the village from April to September last year and found that only 66,965 units were actually billed of the about 3.59 lakh supplied to the village, which amounts to roughly 19 per cent of the billed units and a loss of 81 per cent. "After the implementation of the project, till February 4, of the 68,680 units of electricity supplied, 54,288 have been billed, with only 21 per cent losses, including T&D losses. This amounts to energy conservation of 60 per cent,' said Jagtar Singh. PSEB has spent Rs 14.24 lakh on the pilot project and hopes to recover the amount in 20 months. "We will be replicating the model in other parts of the state as well,' said PSEB member distribution J.S. Sekhon. He said such projects could go a long way in avoiding the crores spend daily to meet the power demand. "If replicated throughout the state, the project would be as good as setting up a 2,000-MW thermal plant,' claimed Jagtar Singh. According to PSEB member distribution J.S. Sekhon, PSEB is working hard to meet the national target of bringing down T&D losses to 15 per cent by 2012. In Punjab, the T&D losses in the last fiscal were 23.9 per cent. "From 30 per cent a few years back, we attained 23.9 per cent last year and hopefully this year the losses would be even lesser,' asserted Sekhon. He said PSEB was working on initiatives like putting all tubewells on high voltage distribution system (HVDS) from the existing low voltage distribution system.