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South Africa faces a ticking clock with only 100 days remaining to overhaul its prepaid meter software. Without this urgent upgrade, the very system that powers daily life may come to a grinding halt.

Eskom and municipalities nationwide have been scrambling to implement the crucial software updates, but as the deadline looms ever closer, the race against time is reaching its fever pitch.

South Africa’s current pre-paid electricity meter software, which generates unique recharge codes, will expire on 24 November 2024, BusinessTech reports.

If the update is not done, residents will be left in the dark and not be able to load electricity after the deadline. There are approximately 11.5 million prepaid meters in South Africa, most of which are Eskom’s – most of which need to be updated.

On Friday (16 August), the Western Cape confirmed that it had reset approximately 96% of all meters within its municipal supply areas versus the national average, which currently sits at 75.8%.

Eskom oversees roughly 6.9 million of the STS-complaint prepaid meters in South Africa, while a further 4.6 million are in the homes and businesses of municipal customers.

According to Eskom’s key revision number dashboard, of the 6.9 million prepaid meters on its system, only 4 million are operating on the new system (as of 15 August 2024).

This presents a bit of a challenge, with 2.9 million Eskom customers alone still needing to make the switch.

At least, Eskom’s data shows that 6.6 million prepaid meters have been ‘pre-coded’, which should make the process easier.

Pre-coding is an internal procedure where Eskom prepares the meters for issuing re-coding tokens—but this precedes the re-coding, and relies on customers completing the switchover with a do-it-yourself (DIY) process.

Since D-Day is looming – exactly only 100 days remaining – an average of 29,000 customers a day need to complete the rollover recording process to meet the deadline.

How to DIY the re-coding process:

Customers with pre-payment meters that have been pre-coded for Key Revision Number (KRN) rollover are required to first purchase their top-up prepaid electricity tokens from authorised vendors and then input the provided key change tokens into their meters.

• Key in the first 20 digits of the recode token and wait for it to be accepted.
• Key in the second 20 digits of the recode token and wait for it to be accepted.
• Very important: Key in the 20 digits of your purchased token to recharge your meter.

Eskom warned that without this pre-coding, customers who have not completed the manual DIY re-coding process by 24 November 2024 will not be able to purchase or load their top-up prepaid electricity tokens.

[source:businesstech]