Big prepaid electricity meter lies

Eskom warned last week that unless people updated their prepaid electricity meters before the 24 November deadline, they would have to pay up to R12,000 for a replacement.

However, two days before the deadline expired, it stated that a “technical breakthrough” allowed it to extend the deadline for so-called “zero buyers” — people who used electricity without paying for it.

Industry sources have said that neither of these statements is true.

Although some meters might return an error when trying to key in their Key Change Tokens — before or after the deadline — this is not the expected behaviour.

There was also no technical breakthrough on Eskom’s part.

One source said the system would automatically generate the necessary tokens to bring an expired meter in line with the online vending system the next time a user bought electricity.

Interestingly, while Eskom communicated that 24 November was a hard deadline for the update, City Power said customers could get their Key Change Tokens until 31 May 2025.

City Power has said it will not charge for meter replacements if they give an error when updating them.

However, it will levy a penalty on anyone who has been consuming electricity illegally before replacing the meter.

It is unclear why Eskom has not made this distinction in its communication to customers.

The meter update deadline and the Token Identifier (TID) rollover date are not the same thing.

Although it is impossible to load units until the update is performed, prepaid electricity users should be able to update their meters after 24 November.

The reason it was necessary to update most prepaid electricity meters in South Africa was because of an anti-fraud system that relies on a timer that starts running on a specific date and time — the Token Identifier (TID).

This issue was not unique to South Africa. All meters using the Standard Transfer Specification (STS) worldwide stopped accepting electricity vouchers after 20:15 on 24 November.

In most cases, all that is necessary to update the meter is for the end user to input two 20-digit codes, called Key Change Tokens, to update the meter’s Key Revision Number (KRN).

The Key Revision Number sets the base date from when the timer starts counting. The TID is a 24-bit field denominated in minutes, allowing the timer to count 16,777,215 minutes.

At KRN version 1, the timer counts from midnight on 1 January 1993 and runs out of range at 20:15 on 24 November 2024.

Updating to KRN 2 moves all the dates forward by 21 years. The base date becomes 1 January 2014, with TIDs running out on 24 November 2045.

In other words, Eskom and municipalities had more than ten years between January 2014 and November 2024 to execute this KRN rollover programme.

Eskom’s poor communication regarding the KRN rollover deadline sparked panic, resulting in extremely long queues outside its offices and temporary customer service outlets around the country.

Broadcast news outlets like eNCA, Newzroom Afrika, and SABC News reported that several people collapsed while waiting in line.

One person reportedly died.

According to reports, dozens of people — many of them elderly — would begin queuing the night before and sleep outside Eskom offices to try and ensure they received help the following day.

Queues grew to over a hundred people outside individual Eskom outlets during the day.

Earlier this week, Eskom said its KRN update programme had been a resounding success, with just over 300,000 zero-buying meters remaining to be updated.

However, Eskom’s online KRN dashboard shows that it still has 1.86 million meters outstanding.

Eskom has since amended its statement, saying that 400,000 zero buyers had become paying customers.

It has urged those customers who have not yet updated their meters to do so before 13 December 2024.

The South African Local Government Association, which is tracking the KRN update programme for municipalities that distribute electricity to residents, reports that 222,620 of their meters still needed to be updated.

MyBroadband contacted Eskom for comment but the power utility did not provide feedback by publication.