Warning to South African households with prepaid electricity meters

Eskom has called on South African households using prepaid electricity to recode their electricity meters or face technical problems.

Prepaid electricity meters in South Africa must be updated to Key Revision Number (KRN) 2 due to the impending Token Identifier (TID) rollover problem.

The issue is related to a date-linked security mechanism that counts every minute since 1 January 1993 and will run out of range next month.

Prepaid meters use tokens to load credit. Each token is generated with a unique Token Identifier (TID).

The TID is a 20-digit number that contains information about when the token was generated. It uses a 24-bit field to track time from a base date in 1993.

This field only has certain possible values and will overflow on 24 November 2024. Technical problems will set in after this date.

Prepaid meters using the old key (KRN 1) will not be able to distinguish between valid and expired tokens. The TID values will reset, and the meters will reject all new tokens.

The latest data shows that Eskom still needs to update 2.9 million of its customers’ prepaid meters as part of the key revision number (KRN) rollover.

Another 600,000 prepaid electricity meters from municipalities have not been updated and will start giving problems next month.

Eskom and municipalities require that their customers manually update their meters by entering two codes that will update the key revision number.

Households which recode their meters will reset the base date to 1 January 2014. This means they will only run out of range again in 2045.

Eskom issued a press statement, urging prepaid electricity customers to recode their meters by 24 November 2024.

“After this deadline, meters will no longer accept electricity tokens unless they are updated to Key Revision Number (KRN) 2,” it said.

Eskom warned that there will be no extension to the 24 November 2024 deadline for the Token Identifier (TID) update.

The recoding process affects approximately 6.9 million prepaid meters in Eskom-supplied areas.

“Failure to recode by the deadline will prevent customers from loading electricity tokens, rendering their meters inoperable,” Eskom said.

Eskom said it has already prepared 97% of the meters by pre-coding them, making it simple for customers to complete the process themselves.

The power utility explained that the do-it-yourself process requires customers to purchase credit tokens from authorised vendors.

Thereafter, they will receive two sets of 20-digit codes to enter into their prepaid meters for the update.

Eskom announced that it was intensifying its awareness campaign to ensure all customers are informed.

“We encourage those not yet recoded their meters to act quickly to avoid service disruptions,” Eskom said.