Municipalities have less than a month to update millions of prepaid electricity meters, before a date rollover will render new electricity tokens bought for those meters useless.
Prepaid electricity meters that have not been updated will be unable to accept any new tokens issued after 24 November, reports MyBroadband.
Updates for more than 3 million of the Standard Transfer Specification (STS) compliant meters are reportedly still outstanding.
A date rollover issue is at the core of the system update, with the vending system running out of electricity token configurations for STS meters on 24 November, according to News24.
Users need to input two 20-digit numbers or key revision numbers (KRN) to update the system. However, the KRNs need to be issued to users, either by Eskom or the municipality that supplies the electricity.
Eskom has posted instructions on social media on how to check if your meter has been updated.
Dear Eskom Customers,
In order to check whether your meter has been recoded/upgraded to KRN2 or is still on KRN1, please enter the code 1844 6744 0738 4377 2416 on your prepaid meter’s keypad. The screen will display either the number 1 or 2, and in some cases, there may also… pic.twitter.com/zS0cIjOdCj
— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) October 24, 2024
The STS Association has reportedly been alerting users to the issue for years, but many South African municipalities only started the rollover process this year.
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Picture: X/Eskom_SA
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