Prepaid electricity meters due for an update before November 2024

Eskom recently announced that it will be starting a national rollout to update the 6.6 million prepaid electricity meters under its control before they become non-operational on 24 November 2024.

The utility has known about the issue for more than 10 years, according to Don Taylor, the inventor of the first prepaid electricity meter, who is heading up the rollover project for the Standard Transfer Specification Association (STSA).

So far, the power utility has updated a total of 5 800 meters in a pilot project in Gauteng.

This means that Eskom is currently 0.087% of the way through its project.

Eskom will have to roll over an average of 12 800 meters per day until 24 November 2024 if the utility is to complete the project in time.

There are around 10 million prepaid electricity meters in South Africa, although there are potentially more than this. 

Municipalities are responsible for updating the rest of the meters in South Africa. Their progress can be tracked on a dashboard created by the South African Local Government Association (SALGA).

There are around 70 million of these meters in the world, spread across about 100 countries.

The meter update, or token identifier (TID) rollover as it is known, is necessary due to a Y2K-style date rollover issue baked into the code of the meters.

News24 has had multiple conversations with industry experts, including Taylor, to understand what caused the issue and how it can be resolved.

When prepaid meters were being designed, the decision was made to attach a section of the 20-digit number that users enter into their prepaid electricity meters to the minute that the token was bought.

This is one way that the tokens are made unique, which is essential as two users cannot be given the same electricity credit token to enter into their meters.

This is a functional system, but there is a catch.

There were only so many minutes that could be attached to a token before the number that users entered into their meters became too long.

This means that all of the STS-compliant prepaid electricity meters that have been rolled out since 1 January 1993, when prepaid electricity meters began operating, came with a built-in expiry date. 

There are a total of 224 minutes that can be attached to a token. That is equal to over 16 million minutes, a little over 279 thousand hours, 11 650 days, or 31.89 years. 

Counting that forward from 1 January 1993 gets you to 24 November 2024. After this date, prepaid electricity meters will no longer be able to accept new electricity credit tokens as there will no longer be any new minutes that the token can be attached to.

If the prepaid meters are to remain functional beyond this date, they need to be updated.

The update

Luckily the update process is reasonably simple. 

Two unique update tokens, known as key change tokens, need to be entered into the meter in the correct order and the meter is ready for when the rollover date hits.

There are two main ways of getting these unique update numbers into the meters. Either a designated task team needs to be sent to every home with a prepaid electricity meter, generate the unique update numbers and enter them into the meter, or prepaid users need to be given the update tokens themselves to enter into their meters.

While it shouldn't be too difficult for a user to enter the numbers into the meter themselves, if the user does not complete the update correctly, they will not be able to purchase and load new tokens into their meter until they have entered the update tokens successfully.

They will be able to try again, but might require assistance in order to successfully complete the update.

A handful of municipalities in South Africa have already completed or almost completed their projects.

These municipalities updated the majority of their meters by sending a designated task team to perform the rollover.

One of the benefits of this is that a meter audit can be performed at the same time and meter fraud and non-compliance can be detected and fixed. This is a huge revenue recovery opportunity for authorities. 

The Dr Beyers Naude municipality for example contracted a service provider to perform their update and meter audit, at no cost to the municipality as the contractor was paid from a portion of the revenue recovered from performing the audit.

A representative from the municipality said that their revenue from the sale of electricity increased from around R3.9 million per month before the update, to R4.9 million afterwards.

The rate of revenue recovery after performing an audit ranges from 5% to up to 70%, according to Brian Hill, the director of Utilities World, one of the companies performing the updates, audits and rollovers.

But Hill said that the time to do both the audit and the update simultaneously has probably run out 

"It's now too late for the municipalities to suddenly get excited about a big revenue enhancement drive," he said.

"Especially the bigger ones, with 40, 50, 60 thousand meters - you're never going to get to all of those meters in time."

He said the priority now should be on rolling over the meters of paying customers before 24 November 2024.

Eskom will be following the do-it-yourself recoding strategy. 

"When the recoding starts in a particular area, customers in that area will get two key change tokens with their normal credit token purchases. Customers will know their recode was done correctly when their purchased credit tokens load successfully," said the utility in a public statement on 23 June.

Eskom said:

Rollout will be phased per residential area, customers are therefore requested to look out for information in their local community or media to know when the recoding will be active in their area and for any updates on the recoding programme.

A word of warning

Some of the municipalities which have already completed their rollover projects warned about the potential difficulties of using the point-of-purchase method to let customers update the meters themselves.

Delphine Thorne, who was heavily involved in the rollover project in Dr Beyers Naude, said the municipality had tried allowing residents roll over their own meters in certain areas.

"When we were giving people the key change tokens to take to their houses, they would not get it right."

She added that the update numbers needed to be entered in a specific sequence, and people would struggle with that, meaning one of their electricians would need to be sent to the home to assist.

Stephen Cooper, the manager of electricity services at the Cape Agulhas municipality, said they had also used the point-of-purchase rollover method in some instances, with some degree of success.

Cape Agulhas had 12 000 meters to reset. Cooper said that he wouldn't want to do a few million meters using the point-of-purchase method, because even if only 1% or 2% of customers struggled to perform the update, that is still a lot of people who will need to be assisted.

Eskoms lack of clarity

News24 provided Eskom ample time to provide clarity on important details surrounding their project, that were not explained in their public statement, but the utility did not respond by the time of publication.

When asked earlier this year about the timeline on which Eskom is planning on completing its rollover project, the utility's media desk said that it was finalising a "comprehensive TID rollover plan that will ensure that all prepaid electricity meters within its supply areas are re-coded before the 24 November 2024".

News24 asked about what support services would be made available to customers performing the update, such as a helpline that can be called, or teams who could be dispatched to help customers who are not able to update the meters themselves, but no answer has been received as yet.

The only information provided by Eskom on how it will be communicating about the update to the public is a line in its statement that says that customers will need to "look out for information in their local community or media to know when the recoding will be active in their area".

Eskom said it would be following a phased approach where different areas are rolled over as the project progresses.

It said in the statement:

Eskom will provide easy step-by-step procedure that will enable a simple recode process.

It also warned about potential fraudsters who might use the rollover as an opportunity to make money.

"There is NO cost to the customer for recoding their meter. Should anyone request payment for this service, customers are advised to immediately report it to SAPS or Eskom on share call 08600 37566."

Consequences

If a significant amount of meters are not rolled over before 24 November 2024, Taylor and Riccardo Pucci, a TID rollover project coordinator at the STSA, said that there would probably be a dramatic increase in the prevalence of meter fraud.

Pucci said:

You are going to get record numbers of meter bypasses. That's essentially what's going to end up happening. If the revenue protection problem was an issue before, it's going to skyrocket. And the customers won't know. They are just going to say, 'Well, it stopped working. I'm just going to bypass my meter.

News24 spoke to a qualified electrician earlier this year, who wished to remain anonymous. They explained that an electrician could bypass a meter in an hour or two, but that it is illegal and can be detected by authorities.

The electrician said that non-electricians who bypass meters could face fines and possible jail sentences, and qualified electricians could face the same punishment, while also losing their licence.