On 30 June 2026, PLN officers found twelve crypto-mining server units inside a shophouse in Tambun Selatan, Kabupaten Bekasi. The three-phase supply ran straight off PLN's network without passing through a kWh meter. PLN cut the supply that day and hauled the equipment back to its office. Darry Giovanno, Communications and TJSL Manager at PLN UID Jawa Barat, made the case public in early July.
Cases that extreme are rare. What turns up at an ordinary house is much smaller: a broken seal on the meter box, a cover somebody once opened, an MCB swapped out during renovation. The team that inspects those things is called P2TL, short for Penertiban Pemakaian Tenaga Listrik, meaning enforcement of electricity use. Once they write a violation class into the inspection report, there is no haggling over the number on your doorstep. It comes out of a formula that has been on the books since 2017.
1. The Four Classes a P2TL Team Looks For
It starts with Ministerial Regulation 27/2017, which sets service quality standards and the charges attached to PLN's distribution of electricity. Article 14(1) says P2TL applies to customers and non-customers who use electricity unlawfully. Article 14(2) splits that into four classes.
| Class | What Article 14(2) says it covers | Common real-world example |
|---|---|---|
| P I | Affects the power limit, does not affect energy measurement | MCB replaced with a higher-ampere unit |
| P II | Affects energy measurement, does not affect the power limit | Broken meter seal, meter glass previously opened |
| P III | Affects the power limit and energy measurement | Both of the above found together |
| P IV | Violation committed by a non-customer | Illegal tap into the network by someone who is not a registered customer |
Look at what the article keys on: the technical effect of the condition found. Paragraph (2) says nothing about intent and nothing about deliberateness. The umbrella is still paragraph (1), which speaks of using electricity unlawfully, so the four classes are kinds of unlawful use rather than free-standing triggers. What catches homeowners off guard is that the condition putting you in class P II can already be on the meter before you ever touch it.
2. The Number Comes From a Formula, Not From the Officer's Estimate
Article 15(1) lists three sanctions: a back bill (Tagihan Susulan), temporary disconnection, and/or full removal of the connection. Article 15(2) carries the formula for each class. The one that matters most for a house is TS2, the formula for class P II:
TS2 = 9 × 720 hours × connected load (kVA) × 0.85 × the highest per-kWh price in the customer's tariff class.
The 720 hours is one full month. The 9 is the multiplier. The regulation never says what the 0.85 is; it is conventionally read as power factor. Put together, the formula calculates as if your house ran flat out, twenty-four hours a day, for nine months, at the highest rate in your class. The calculation is pitched well above ordinary use.
Using the non-subsidised Q3 2026 tariffs, which run for the July to September period, this is what falls out:
| Connected load | Tariff per kWh | TS2 (class P II violation) |
|---|---|---|
| 1,300 VA (R-1/TR) | Rp1,444.70 | around Rp10.3 million |
| 2,200 VA (R-1/TR) | Rp1,444.70 | around Rp17.5 million |
| 3,500 VA (R-2/TR) | Rp1,699.53 | around Rp32.8 million |
Three caveats so nobody reads that table as a receipt. It only covers TS2; TS1 is calculated from the standing charge or the minimum bill, and TS3 is TS1 plus TS2. The rates are reviewed every three months, so the next quarter's figure may differ. And Article 17 hands the detailed rules on P2TL and back billing to a PLN Board of Directors regulation. That rule exists and has a number: PLN Board Regulation 0028.P/DIR/2023, named as the P2TL rule on the Directorate General of Electricity's own site. A Board Regulation is an internal state-enterprise instrument, not published in the national legal database and not annexed to any ministerial regulation, so it cannot be quoted article by article from an official source. So the table shows the order of magnitude, not the figure that will print on the bill.
3. Three Weak Points in a Newly Occupied House
Who opened your meter box last?
Extra lighting points, an air conditioner upstairs, a relocated panel. Each job brings someone else close to the meter box. Swapping the MCB for a higher rating so the breaker stops tripping when a welder fires up is the textbook definition of class P I. The worker doing it usually has no idea it has a name and a formula attached.
Whose meter did you inherit?
A resale house, a unit that was rented out for a while, a unit whose wiring was finished by a contractor before handover. The meter already has a history before you get the keys. Article 14 classifies by whatever condition is found at the time of inspection, and that inspection happens while you are the registered customer.
Can a seal break on its own?
In Bekasi Utara clusters the meter box is usually placed on the front fence, in direct sun all day and in the rain all wet season. Brittle lead seals and warped box covers are not an unusual sight. Since it is the physical condition that gets recorded rather than the cause, reporting it yourself to PLN 123 or through the PLN Mobile app before anyone else finds it is the safer move.
One step takes care of all three. At handover, photograph the meter box up close. Meter number, seal condition, MCB position, opening reading, all of it in one dated frame, saved somewhere. It is the cheapest document you will ever own and it takes thirty seconds. If you want to check the wiring while you are at it, there are seven electrical checks worth doing before you move in.
4. Two Things Changed in January 2025 and January 2026
Regulation 27/2017 has been amended twice: first by Regulation 18/2019, then by Minister of Energy Regulation No. 2 of 2025, promulgated on 21 January 2025. That second amendment touches ten items, two of them Articles 16 and 17, and its recitals give the adjustment of installation certification costs as the main reason for it. Monthly P2TL reporting and the ratification of the downstream rules now go to the Minister; in the 2017 text both went to the Director General. The step up in ratification level is rarely mentioned. It means the next version of the P2TL rulebook has to pass the minister's desk rather than the director general's.
The second change is bigger. Law No. 1 of 2026 on Criminal Penalty Adjustment took effect on 2 January 2026 and rewrote the penalties in laws outside the Criminal Code into the Criminal Code's fine categories. Appendix I, entry 68, covers Article 51 of Law 30/2009 on Electricity:
| Article 51 | Original text of Law 30/2009 | After Law 1/2026 |
|---|---|---|
| paragraph (1) | 3 years and a Rp500 million fine | 3 years and/or a category III fine |
| paragraph (2) | 5 years and a Rp2.5 billion fine | 5 years and/or a category IV fine |
| paragraph (3) | 7 years and a Rp2.5 billion fine | 7 years and/or a category V fine |
Article 79 of the new Criminal Code sets category III at Rp50 million, category IV at Rp200 million, and category V at Rp500 million. So paragraph (3), the one covering unlawful use of electricity that is not yours, moved on two fronts at once: the fine dropped from Rp2.5 billion to Rp500 million, and the conjunction moved from "and" to "and/or", so prison and fine no longer have to be imposed together. Any article still printing "a Rp2.5 billion fine for electricity theft" is describing the rules as they stood before 2 January 2026.
Article 51 is the criminal route, and it is not the route taken over a brittle meter seal. P2TL findings at a house are almost always settled administratively through a back bill and temporary disconnection under Article 15. The criminal route is for matters on a different scale, like that shophouse with twelve servers in it.
5. The Other Direction: When PLN Owes You
The same regulation runs both ways, and the second direction gets far less attention. Article 6A sets the service quality level for the Outage Duration indicator at 1 hour per month. If outages run longer than that, paragraph (3) says the customer is entitled to compensation, and paragraph (4) sets the rate:
| Outage duration above the 1 hour/month level | Compensation |
|---|---|
| up to 2 hours | 50% of the standing charge or minimum bill |
| more than 2 up to 4 hours | 75% |
| more than 4 up to 8 hours | 100% |
| more than 8 up to 16 hours | 200% |
| more than 16 up to 40 hours | 300% |
| more than 40 hours | 500% |
The 1 hour per month figure is a default rather than a universal one. Article 6A(2) lets the Minister set a different level on grounds of geography or the condition of the existing network, and 6A(3) ties the entitlement to paragraph (1) or paragraph (2).
Prepaid customers get it too: Article 6C(1) equates their compensation with regular customers on the same connected load, and 6C(2) applies it to the following month's bill or token purchase. Paragraph (3) excludes special-service customers.
Read the exemptions before getting your hopes up. Article 7(1) releases PLN from paying compensation for Outage Duration and number of outages where the outage is needed for maintenance, expansion or rehabilitation of the installation; where the fault occurs on an electricity installation through no negligence of PLN; where a situation technically risks public safety; and/or for the purposes of an investigation. Limb (b) of Article 7 is the broad one, and in practice a lot of outages land there. Article 8 adds force majeure, from floods and earthquakes to an order from a competent authority. One duty does survive: for planned work, Article 7(2) requires PLN to notify customers at least 24 hours before the supply is interrupted.
The definition is what makes this usable. Article 1(2a) counts Outage Duration from the moment PLN receives information about the outage, whether from SCADA or from a customer report, until power is back on. A report through PLN Mobile or 123 is what can start the clock when SCADA has not picked the outage up.
The five indicators other than Outage Duration run on different numbers, and their history took a detour: Regulation 18/2019 replaced Article 6 with a threshold-free regime, then the 10 per cent threshold reappeared in the text of Article 6 as printed by Regulation 2/2025, even though the amendment item named only paragraph (5). Article 6(2) and Article 6B give a 35% reduction on the standing charge or minimum bill for tariff classes subject to tariff adjustment, and 20% for those that are not, triggered when performance exceeds 10% above the set level. The five are number of outages, speed of low-voltage load changes, kWh meter reading errors, billing correction time, and speed of new low-voltage connections. Outage Duration is itself item (a) of Article 6(1); what sets it apart is Article 6A, which stacks the 50 to 500 per cent ladder on top of it.
6. If a P2TL Team Is Standing at Your Gate
Article 17 puts the operational detail in PLN Board Regulation 0028.P/DIR/2023, which does set out the inspection procedure, the report, and an objection process, but is not published in the national legal database. So there is no ministerial regulation to cite for a customer's rights during an inspection, and what follows is sensible practice available to anyone rather than quoted provisions:
- Ask the officers for identification and a work order before anyone opens the meter box.
- Stay with the inspection from start to finish, and photograph or film the meter before and after it is opened.
- Read the inspection report in full. The violation class written there decides which formula applies.
- Do not sign a form with blank fields still on it.
- Ask for a copy of the report the same day, not later.
- If you disagree with what it says, file a written objection with your local PLN service unit and keep the receipt.
If you have just taken handover, do it in the other order. Photograph the meter, transfer the PLN account into your name so the billing and the history sit under you, then re-check every time work touches the panel. Do that and you stop having to explain somebody else's meter and start having your own paper trail.
Frequently asked questions
My meter seal is broken but nobody touched it. Am I still liable?
You can be. Article 14(2) classifies by the technical effect of the condition found, with no mention of intent or cause. Reporting the damage first to PLN 123 or PLN Mobile, with dated photos, puts you on record as the person who reported it.
How large is the back bill for a 2,200 VA house?
Around Rp17.5 million for a class P II violation, using the TS2 formula in Article 15(2) and the Q3 2026 (July to September) R-1/TR rate of Rp1,444.70 per kWh. PLN's final figure is computed under Board Regulation 0028.P/DIR/2023.
Is the fine for electricity theft still Rp2.5 billion?
Not since 2 January 2026. Law 1/2026, Appendix I entry 68, changed the penalty under Article 51(3) of Law 30/2009 to up to 7 years and/or a category V fine, which Article 79 of the Criminal Code sets at Rp500 million.
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