- This topic is empty.
Viewing 1 post (of 1 total)
-
Posts
-
Eskom prepaid electricity meter disaster looming BY Hanno Labuschagne
While South Africa’s local municipalities are on track with an urgent update to all their customers’ prepaid meters, Eskom’s current update rollout rate could leave over 1.82 million prepaid customers without working meters later this year.
About 4.45 million of the roughly 11.53 million prepaid meters in South Africa still need to receive the key revision number (KRN) rollover update to continue accepting electricity tokens after 24 November 2024.
From that date, every Standard Transfer Specifications (STS)-compliant prepaid electricity meter in the world will stop accepting new voucher tokens unless it receives a KRN code.
The issue is caused by one of the anti-fraud measures built into STS-compliant prepaid systems — a timer that started counting on 1 January 1993.
The mechanism applies a unique token identifier (TID) in the 20 digits of each electricity token to prevent reuse.
Eskom explains that this TID is referenced to a base date of 1993 and will run out of range in 2024, known as the TID rollover event.
This type of issue is referred to as a time storage or date rollover bug.
Electricity distributors like Eskom and municipalities require their customers to update the meters by entering 20-digit KRN codes, which are similar to regular electricity credit tokens.
Customers are getting their codes in phases via the same channels through which they would normally buy electricity — including banking apps or physical vendors.
Eskom and the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) provide online dashboards which are regularly updated to show the latest progress of their KRN rollover projects.
MyBroadband consulted these dashboards to see how the projects were faring and whether they were on track to be completed by 24 November 2024.
Eskom rollover rate increases — but still too slow
Eskom oversees roughly 6.9 million of the STS-complaint prepaid meters in South Africa, while a further 4.63 million are in the homes and businesses of municipal customers.
According to the latest data, only about 7.07 million meters have been updated.
By Sunday, 7 July 2024, roughly 3.86 million — or 55.78% — of Eskom Direct prepaid customers had updated their meters.
When MyBroadband previously looked at progress in the KRN rollover by 15 May 2024, Eskom had updated 3,605,918 meters since 19 October 2023. That works out to a rate of about 14,009 per day.
As of Sunday, 7 July 2024, the number had grown by 242,820, increasing the daily update rate to 14,670.
However, to meet the deadline of 24 November 2024, Eskom would need to recode the remaining 3.04 million meters at a rate of 21,874 per day from 8 July 2024.
Eskom has repeatedly attempted to ally fears that it was progressing too slowly with the rollout and insisted it was “on track”.
Based on the data on its dashboard, over a quarter of its prepaid customers are at risk of being unable to load electricity tokens from the KRN deadline.
Municipalities pick up pace
The situation has improved drastically for municipalities since our last assessment.
According to SALGA’s dashboard, 3.22 million of their roughly 4.63 million meters were updated by 7 July 2024, which is about 69.64% of the total.
Between 15 May 2024 and 7 July 2024, 588,512 meters were updated, working out to 11,104 per day.
That is an astounding improvement over the previous rate of 3,900.
Progress by major metros
To update all meters before the deadline, municipalities would have to update meters at an average rate of roughly 10,114 per day.
That means even if their rollout declined by 1,000 per day, they would still have all meters updated by the deadline.
Among the major municipalities that started their KRN rollover after our previous report on the situation is the City of Tshwane, which has updated over 100,000 meters since May 2024.
Of the other major metros, the City of Cape Town has progressed the most, with nearly 95% of its prepaid meters updated.
The City of Ekurhuleni has also done well, with 91% of its meters updated.
The City of Johannesburg has updated over half of its 292,121 meters, while Durban’s City of Ethekwini has yet to report updating any of its 260,817 meters.
SOURCE:Eskom prepaid electricity meter disaster looming (mybroadband.co.za)
Viewing 1 post (of 1 total)
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.