Residents slow to update electricity meters

Only 36% of Bay users have punched in new identifier tokens, without which devices will become non-functional

Only 36% of Nelson Mandela Bay’s residents using prepaid electricity have successfully updated their meters with the new identifier tokens to prevent them from becoming nonoperational ahead of the deadline later this year.

This is according to electricity and energy executive director Luvuyo Magalela following a postponed standing committee meeting yesterday where he was supposed to present the latest report on the token identifier (TID) rollover status and compliance of metro users.

Of the 343,386 prepaid users in the metro, 123,054 of them have entered the recoding tokens. “Our biggest challenge is that people are tampering with meters and are not buying tokens, hence the number of households covered is not equal to the fact that we have done over 95% of the wards,” Magalela said.

He said only wards 58, 59 and 60 had not been moved into the new Key Revision Number (KRN) system, meaning vendors could not generate the recoding tokens for customers in those areas.

The metro missed its December deadline to have all the wards activated, but Magalela said the three outstanding wards would be updated into the new system by the end of January or early next month.

“We had some glitches because this programme is between us and the budget and treasury directorate.

“They own the system while we own the meters,” Magalela said.

The metro established a task team in 2021 between the two directorates to oversee the metro rollover.

According to Magalela, about 40% of customers cannot do the TID rollover because their meters are either blocked by the municipality or they have tampered with the meters.

“The next phase will be to do loss control where we go to these areas and force households to change the meter and charge them a penalty for reconnection,” he said.

In the report that was supposed to be tabled yesterday, some key challenges identified included;

Tampered meters; Failure to follow instructions;

Customers taking too long to insert the two recode tokens;

Customers not inserting one of the tokens; and

The municipality has different types of meters which require different token codes.

Eskom and municipalities are on a November 24 2024 deadline to update about 6.6million meters across SA.

Prepaid electricity meters are based on Standard Transfer Specifications technology and have token identifiers referenced to a base date of 1993.

This means unless the identifier is rolled over or updated, they will become non-functional. The base date of January 1 1993 will be changed to a base date of January 1 2014.

To record their meters, users need two key change or recode tokens that can be received from their vendor physically or online.

Once the recode tokens are obtained, the customer has to punch in the first 20 digits from token one and wait for it to be accepted.

Thereafter, repeat the process with recode token two.

To complete the process, the user then has to enter a credit token that will reload the electricity units onto the meters.

RACE AGAINST TIME: The deadline for updating pre-paid meters is November 24