South African city’s new smart meters allegedly burn through electricity tokens

Scooby_Doo said:
Or more likely - the residents have never had to pay for tokens and don't understand what electricity costs.
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Or maybe just the truth instead of making up stories...

It said this would also benefit customers, as installation was free, existing units are transferred to the new meter, and the meters enabled real-time usage tracking.
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And they are correct, just don't know all the facts.
Plenty munis use this smart meters to add a monthly charge or connection fee to prepaid users. By adding a 2nd profile to the meter, preprogrammed to deplete a certain load, they use this to extract a monthly fee of the prepaid value. In a certain WC muni they charge 100w per hour, which is roughly 72 units a month, and that comes down do more or less R200 per month

And they are clever, the 100w load is only active once you add a load, so you can't swith off everything to see theirs.
 
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Easy enough to test, just do an actual test on one of the disputed meters and measure the actual cost being charged.
 
I've gotten 2 notices to switch my current meter to the new prepaid meter.

I haven't got a "current meter"

And hence I have ignored their plight to rip me off and make life a living hell when they can control your life and disappear (offline) when you need to top up etc.
 
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