Criminal syndicates target solar panels and gas bottles

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DUDUZILE RAMELA: If you are a property owner with gas bottles and exterior lighting, including floodlights installed on your property – beware. Alarm bells are being sounded about criminal behaviour targeting these assets.

Rodney Taylor is managing director of Guardian Eye. He joins us to help ward off these threats as much as possible. Rodney, what is the overall trend you are witnessing when it comes to gas bottles and solar?

RODNEY TAYLOR: Well, the trend these days, it’s not just opportunistic criminals, it’s organised criminal syndicates.

They’re very organised and they’ve got the right equipment, and they’ve got the ways and means to dismantle the systems very quickly and efficiently, and are able to get the equipment into the black market.

So it’s most definitely becoming an organised crime syndicate.

DUDUZILE RAMELA: So we’ve moved from the days of them taking the batteries for your gate to now accessing your property, because one assumes that you would need to be inside the property, more so where gas bottles are concerned for your kitchen, which by law must be outside, and solar on your roof. The issue of access, I guess, is one that we need to look out for. How?

RODNEY TAYLOR: Definitely. These days, the mistake that consumers are making is they’re not treating that [as an] asset and they’re not connecting it to their current home security systems.

We always urge that these are high-value assets, they high in demand, and the consumer needs to ensure that they use technology.

We’ve got some of our customers now with hidden sensors that are connected to the [solar] panels. We’ve got hidden sensors on the gas bottles. If there’s any disruption of that asset, our sensors will alert a nerve centre.

AI is being used now with regard to monitoring these high-value assets.

We’ve even got some of our customers who are actually reverting to drones with AI to monitor and manage large solar plants that are in outlying areas.

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DUDUZILE RAMELA: Already you’ve had to spend just to be able to get off the grid, if you are off the grid, whether it’s electricity or with gas. Now there’s extra spend in terms of security. Some people also going for the insurance option.

Practically, what are you able to share with us in terms of what needs to be done by the powers that be, I guess response from government, and if you have a security company in your neighbourhood, what do they look out for?

RODNEY TAYLOR: Government definitely needs to play a big part in this.

Government needs to crack down on the informal black market and especially regulate the second-hand solar sales and enforce strict tracking of panels and serial numbers.

So we’re relying on the government [for that]. From an insurer perspective, we definitely say that they need to have minimal physical security requirements on installation and also use reputable installers.

Then from the security industry perspective, the internet of things and AI is playing a very big part in it, where security companies are now starting to deploy very intelligent software across camera systems that are existing.

So that brings down the costs for the consumer, because most consumers will have a camera installed at some point in either their premises or their home, and we can physically use that old equipment to connect to a centralised nerve centre.

So it is evolving and it’s pretty cost effective.

DUDUZILE RAMELA: Okay, we can hear your pup in the background. Is everything okay? Is he or she trying to alert you to something?

RODNEY TAYLOR: Well, that’s another alternative, get a little dog that makes a lot of noise.

DUDUZILE RAMELA: Always a safe bet, I tell you. And make sure that that pup is safe as well.

In closing the conversation, when you speak to consumers who have gas installed on their property, who have solar installed on their property, also, we are seeing that lights are being stolen. Can you just speak to consumers in terms of their behaviour, what do we look out for?

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So you drive up to your house, you open that remote control gate, you’re always told to look around before you go in. Is there anything – because sometimes when things happen to you, you blame yourself – is there anything that one can do better?

RODNEY TAYLOR: Some common mistakes, and this might be like an obvious one, is just leaving tools accessible to criminals. Often, we see consumers leave ladders, crowbars, garden tools that criminals are able to access and are quite easy to use.

Also, out of sight positioning is often also a cause. You install these gas bottles or these battery systems in enclosed or dark areas, and they actually form a blind spot.

So blind spots are a problem, leaving tools around, and also just securing the assets.

You get specific types of bolts now, they can bolt down solar panels. You get specific types of enclosures that can enclose gas bottles. I guess all in all try and make the asset more secure.

Once again, if you’ve got a camera nearby, investigate AI software that can alert you when you’re not there by utilising your camera.

DUDUZILE RAMELA: I just want to pick up on something that you mentioned a little bit earlier on. So this is organised crime. These people are going to sell these assets in the black market.

Some of them, it might not even be the black market, so one would be none the wiser as to whether this is a stolen asset or not. Is that what I’m getting, that they go and resell this and one would not know that this is something that is actually stolen.

RODNEY TAYLOR: Unfortunately, because it’s not regulated and it’s not serialised, government needs to play a bigger part in this, as well as in our national SAPS (South African Police Service), because currently, yes, you could purchase a battery or a solar panel, none the wiser that it’s actually been stolen.

In most instances, the theft doesn’t always happen in consumer layer, it happens in transit, or it happens where it’s centrally stored or where it’s centrally imported.

So the event could have happened before it actually even received the consumer from a secondary sale. It could be an initial sale where that consumer’s purchasing, stolen goods.

DUDUZILE RAMELA: Rodney, thank you so much for your time this afternoon. Rodney Taylor is managing director of Guardian Eye.

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