Gaithersburg, MD -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/27/2010 -- RecoverIR, Inc. (RIR) announces the launch of RecoverIR™ Services. These services include Aerial Thermal Mapping, GIS, IT Support, & Analysis, for Identification and Recovery of Lost Energy & Billings from Utility Energy Theft. The company was conceptualized after an extraordinarily successful energy theft project for DTE Energy.
RecoverIR™ is owned by Greg Stockton and, R. Gillem Lucas. Mr. Stockton is President and founder of Stockton Infrared Thermographic Services, Inc. (www.stocktoninfrared.com) and is an innovator of numerous infrared applications, including many applications for aerial infrared. The aerial division of SITS, AITscan™ provided the aerial infrared survey for the energy theft project for DTE Energy. Mr. Lucas is a Stanford Business School and Naval Academy graduate and is a Professional Engineer with more than 23 years of experience working with utilities.
“We have the assets, expertise and proprietary processes to identify utility natural gas theft. RecoverIR™ combines proven techniques with innovative services to save our utility partners millions of dollars,” says Greg Stockton, RecoverIR™ President.
Natural gas utilities have two primary categories of residential thieves; households who are stealing natural gas without paying any bills, and households who are underpaying their bills because they are bypassing the installed meters. “Our proven methodology is one of the most important, substantive, and sustainable breakthroughs for natural gas and electric utilities to identify lost energy and revenue, to be utilized in the past twenty years, especially in the less fortunate urban neighborhoods of the Midwest and Northeast,” states Gil Lucas, Vice President. “Once utilities have clearly identified the distribution of theft, they can more accurately identify the magnitude and probable locations for energy losses within their supply and distribution systems. We are so confident in our methodology that our services include a guarantee based upon our customers return on investment (ROI). We want our utility customers to recover lost revenue and their paying customers to see reductions in their monthly utility bills,” he concludes.
The results of the project with DTE Energy consisted of the provision of a fully integrated, high resolution aerial infrared survey of 84,000 acres in 2009 to detect households who may be stealing natural gas and/or electricity. Before the aerial infrared survey, DTE Energy thought they might have 5% of the households stealing natural gas, but discovered that almost 20% of the households in the survey were natural gas thieves. The results of the survey also revealed that 80% of the households who were stealing natural gas were also stealing electricity.
As the number of vicious dogs and guns increases, RecoverIR’s large area (hundreds of thousands of acres) aerial infrared surveys have become the safest and most reliable way to accurately identify energy thieves. The results at DTE Energy indicate that the combination of high unemployment, poor housing market, and inner city poverty, will push more households to steal or fraudulently garner natural gas and/or electricity.
Utilities that use RecoverIR™ Services will be able to recover stolen energy, identify ‘cap and trade’ credits, and dramatically improve the collective energy efficiency of the utility customer. “Energy thieves do not have any incentive to conserve energy, therefore we believe energy thieves may be using 10%-30% more energy per household than a comparable residence paying for its energy,” states Greg Stockton.
For more information on RecoverIR™ please visit www.recoverir.com or call 336-689-3658. For specifics on the ROI that RecoverIR™ can deliver, please visit the services page, www.recoverir.com/services.html.