Eskom says it has successfully pre-coded 6.6 million out of its 6.9 million pre-payment meters in the TID rollover process.
Image credit: azureimages©123rf.com pe rt heating pipe civilian
Eskom says it refocused its resources to pre-code meters via its central systems and has successfully pre-coded 6.6 million out of its 6.9 million pre-payment meters in the TID rollover process.
The cut-off date for meters to be recoded to continue to accept pre-paid tokens is 24 November 2024.
This is part of an ongoing global exercise that targets all prepaid meters that use the Standard Transfer Specification (STS).
This is a universal method to transfer tokens to prepaid meters while ensuring the security of generated tokens.
On 12 July, ESI Africa reported that Eskom’s website reflected that of the 6,899,860 meters needed to be upgraded under its purview, 3,872,844 key change tokens had so far been issued.
As it stands, 300,000 meters under the utility’s domain needs to be updated.
Have you read? TID Countdown: 4 Months to go
According to the SA Local Government Association (SALGA) dashboard (as of 30 July 2024 at around 5pm SA time), out of the 4,590,942 meters to be reset across municipalities, 3,341,651 had already been updated.
This leaves 1,249,291 meters left.
Collectively, between Eskom and the municipalities, more than 1.5 million more meters still need to be updated in the next 117 days.
Eskom is urging customers to input all previously purchased credit tokens from authorised vendors into their meter before entering their new meter recoding tokens.
Eskom said that without this pre-coding, customers who have not completed the manual Do It Yourself (DIY) recoding process by the November deadline will not be able to purchase or load their top-up prepaid electricity tokens.
Additionally, if a meter is pre-coded and the customer buys illegal prepaid tokens from illegal or ghost vendors, they will not be able to recode or load the illegal top-up prepaid electricity tokens.
Have you read? TID rollover: Joburg’s meter update challenge, national progress slow
Monde Bala, Eskom’s Group Executive for Distribution, said: “We have changed our approach to deliver the goal of making it as easy as possible for customers using pre-paid meters to do so seamlessly after 24 November 2024.
“We decided to refocus our resources to pre-code the meters via our central systems, in addition to still promoting the DIY approach, where we had been encouraging customers to recode their meters now.”
“Thanks to pre-coding, customers can now effortlessly continue to purchase electricity from authorised vendors with ease after 24 November 2024, safe and confident in the knowledge that their pre-payment meters are either recoded to accept purchased tokens or pre-coded for recoding and can accept tokens purchased through all our official channels,” said Bala.
Eskom is urging customers to input all previously purchased credit tokens from authorised vendors into their meter before entering their new meter recoding tokens.
Pre-coding of the meters will not impact the usage of old credit tokens until the DIY process is completed. This is crucial as old credit tokens will not function after the meter is recoded by a customer through the DIY process.
Have you read? Kenya updates more than 4m prepaid meters in a month
Pre-coding is an internal procedure where Eskom prepares the meters for the issuance of recoding tokens.
This process precedes the recoding, which is a DIY process. For the recoding DIY process, customers whose pre-payment meters 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.
The progress of the Key Revision Number rollover is monitored daily via a dashboard and customer support is provided through various simplified mechanisms.
Easy step-by-step guides are available on various Eskom communication channels, including social media platforms, the Alfred Chatbot for questions and answers (Q&A) and the Eskom website, to facilitate a seamless process.
Eskom would like to remind customers that the recoding of pre-payment meters is a free service and warns against scammers who may try to exploit the re-coding process by requesting payment for this service.
The process of purchasing electricity remains the same. Customers can continue to buy electricity from major banks, online platforms, fuel stations, authorised prepaid electricity vending agents, and retailers nationwide.
Have you read? Updating prepaid meter software taking too long in South Africa
Please refer to the dashboard on the Eskom website for the updated figures of the Eskom Key Revision Number rollover project progress: Key Revision Number – Distribution (eskom.co.za).
To log any faults related to KRN, log a fault on https://alfred.eskom.co.za/chatroom/.
The Token Identifier is a 24 bit field, contained in STS compliant tokens, that identifies the date and time of the token generation.
According to the STS Association, it is used to determine if a token has already been used in a prepaid meter.
The TID is referenced to a base date of 1993 and will run out of range in 2024, thus causing the prepayment meter to stop accepting new tokens.
pvc solid wall pipe for underground communication pipe municipal Get your two recode tokens from your prepaid electricity vendor when Eskom prompts you that your area is being rolled over. Key in the first 20 digits of your recode token, and wait for it to be accepted. Key in the second 20 digits of your recode token, and wait for it to be accepted.