R6,000 fines in prepaid electricity meter crackdown
Eskom’s data has revealed that nearly 40% of prepaid meters in some South African cities aren’t vending power. This indicates significant meter fraud and guilty customers could face hefty fines and disconnections.
Speaking to SABC News, Eskom spokesperson Daphne Mokwena said the state-owned power utility fines illegally connected customers around R6,050 and disconnects them until they pay the penalty.
These customers have either bypassed their electricity meters or purchased recharge tokens from illegal vendors.
“We’ve got customers that we have disconnected because when we audited their meters, we found that customers have done these illicit behaviours,” said Mokwena.
“The process is that we disconnect the customer. We fine the customer depending on what the customer is consuming. If it’s a 60amp or 20amp customer, we fine the customer about R6,050.”
“The customer stays disconnected until they pay that amount,” she added.
Mokwena noted that, in some instances, Eskom has disconnected entire areas as it found that 90% of customers in a neighbourhood are using illicit connections.
“We do disconnect these customers until we come to some agreement where they pay their penalties. We then replace the meters that they would have vandalised,” she said.
Eskom and municipal electricity distributors are currently running their key revision number (KRN) rollover projects.
The updates are essential for prepaid electricity meters to accept recharge tokens from 24 November 2024. Eskom tracks the rollover’s progress through its KRN dashboard
As of 18 September 2024, less than 60% of Eskom’s 6.9 million prepaid meters had received updates, indicating that a large number of its prepaid customers have non-vending meters.
Eskom has “precoded” its prepaid meters, which puts them in a state where customers must recode them the next time they transact on the meter.
Eskom announced that it had precoded roughly 6.6 million prepaid meters nearly two months ago. However, almost 2.8 million customers still need to recode their prepaid meters.
It is increasingly likely that many of these meters aren’t vending. Eskom said this could be due to one of four reasons:
- The customers have bypassed their meters and consume electricity without reducing their units.
- Customers are loading their meters with illegal electricity tokens from illicit or “ghost” vendors.
- These are meters in areas which Eskom has disconnected.
- The meters are loaded with a large amount of electricity, which is unlikely due to Eskom’s Incline Block Tariff structure, which discourages buying in bulk.
Eskom estimated that it loses about R5 billion each year to electricity theft. However, a recent analysis by MyBroadband based on the KRN rollover data showed that Eskom’s losses could be significantly higher.
The calculations are summarised in the table below.
| Estimated customers buying illegal electricity and bypassing meters | Revenue lost from 450kWh average monthly consumption | Revenue lost from 600kWh average monthly consumption | Revenue lost from 900kWh average monthly consumption |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 million | R18.13 billion | R23.28 billion | R39.82 billion |
| 1.5 million | R27.20 billion | R34.91 billion | R59.73 billion |
| 2 million | R36.26 billion | R46.56 billion | R79.64 billion |
| 2.5 million | R45.33 billion | R58.20 billion | R99.55 billion |
Time is running out
While the South African Local Government Association, representing municipal power providers, expects municipalities to have updated all their meters by the 24 November 2024 deadline, Eskom is lagging far behind.
As of 18 September 2024, 2,784,499 Eskom prepaid meters still haven’t been recoded. To ensure the rollover is completed before the deadline, Eskom must recode more than 42,000 meters daily.
If Eskom’s update rate doesn’t accelerate, many of its prepaid customers, including those who have used illegal tokens, won’t be able to load units onto their meters come 24 November.
For reference, the Eskom KRN dashboard showed that 4,058,910 customers had updated their meters as of 27 August 2024.
This works out to a rollover rate of 2,568 meters daily between 27 August and 18 September 2024. The rate must increase more than 16-fold to meet the deadline.
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