Eskom claims huge success after prepaid meter scramble

Eskom has said that its prepaid electricity upgrade project has been a success. However, South Africans who had to queue for hours on end have expressed a different sentiment towards the programme.

The state power utility and municipalities nationwide have had to notify and convince South Africans to recode a combined 11 million prepaid meters with the Key Revision Number version 2 (KRN 2) update in the past year.

The recoding is necessary due to a time-based security mechanism in most meters called the token identifier (TID), which ran out of range yesterday, at 20:15 on 24 November 2024.

Updating the KRN version essentially causes the TID timer to count down from a more recent date, extending the rollover to November 2045.

Eskom general manager Al’louise van Deventer told eNCA that the upgrade was very successful and resulted in a significant response from zero-buyers — people who consume electricity without purchasing it.

“Overall, we have seen that 99% of our customers can transact on KRN2, so the project has been a huge success,” Van Deventer said.

“This leaves us with just over 300,000 customers who still have to respond to the call. These customers are in the zero-buyer category.”

However, the thousands of South Africans who had to stand in queues similar to those during election time, with many waiting in line overnight, don’t seem to share Eskom’s interpretation of the project as a “huge success.”

Despite having a decade to perform the update, Eskom only started preparing meters for KRN rollover — what it has dubbed as “precoding” — about a year and three months before the deadline.

Eskom and municipalities also seem to have underestimated the extent of their “zero buyer” problem, and therefore did not have sufficient resources to deal with the last-minute rush of people.

Matters weren’t helped by the fact that customers with legitimate technical problems were mixed in with the crush of electricity thieves.

Unfortunately, Eskom’s communication around this sparked panic in many customers.

This is because the power utility and energy minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa insisted there could be no extension. Eskom also warned customers that if they missed the deadline, a fee of R12,000 would need to be paid for a replacement meter.

These statements failed to communicate important nuances to customers, or were downright misleading.

While meters still on KRN 1 would not have been unable to accept electricity vouchers from 20:15 on Sunday, the update to KRN 2 can still be performed after the deadline.

This was as long as the customer bought an electricity voucher by Sunday night, Eskom said.

In one case, a 67-year-old woman in the queue at the Diepkloof service centre in Soweto said she had been queuing since 23:00 the night before, sleeping on her chair to keep her spot in line.

Expressing frustration with her situation, she criticised the government for the queuing conditions created by the panic and said it was the most inhumane way a government could treat its citizens.

While she acknowledged being sent an SMS by Eskom three months prior, she said she did not understand what it meant and, therefore, ignored it. She then received another message on Tuesday, which caused her to take action.

Queuers also seemed to be unaware of the extension of the deadline announced for zero-buyers on Friday, 22 November.

“Current zero buyers with active meters have been granted an extension to update their meters to be KRN2 (Key Revision Number 2) compliant beyond the 24 November 2024 deadline,” Eskom said.

“A technological breakthrough has enabled Eskom to pre-create Key Change Tokens on its online vending system.”

Eskom urged zero-buyers to purchase electricity from legal vendors. This would allow them to be issued Key Change Tokens.

“Once the meter has been activated by the purchase of electricity, the customer can then visit any of the Eskom sites to complete the conversion process. The final step can be completed after 24 November 2024.”