Electric company reduces material theft by over 90%

A reliable solution with innovative Axis technologies is the key transformer to simplifying operations while ensuring safety and reducing costs.

Guatemala Electric Company Inc. (GECINC) distributes power to 845,000 customers in the City of Guatemala as well as the neighboring cities of Sacatepéquez and Escuintla. This requires 64 electrical substations and many customer service offices throughout the area, which creates numerous security challenges. The current analog camera system was not sufficient for GECINC to monitor individuals entering and leaving the electric substations. The company also wanted to cover more areas and protect the perimeter of these substations with less resources, while minimizing cable theft that would cause power outages.

Solution

The decision was made to migrate from their analog surveillance system to a scalable IP-based solution. The video surveillance project began in 2009 with an Axis pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) dome network camera. Following great success, the company now has 182 cameras. The substations installed AXIS Q60 PTZ Network Camera Series and AXIS P13 Series fixed cameras with Axis Lightfinder technology. The customer service locations have a network of AXIS M10 Series, AXIS M50 PTZ, and AXIS M30 Network Camera Series.

Result

GECINC saw a tremendous return on investment with a 90% improvement in 24/7 monitoring and security operations. This solution automated the company’s security approach for employees going in and out of the substations. This is a huge improvement from before, where security officers drove around on motorcycles throughout the day unlocking the gates for employees. Now, the security team can identify, validate and grant access to people automatically using the network cameras. This reduced the number of security officers from 12 to four.