South Africa has 11.4 million prepaid meters in all, of which Eskom is responsible for updating 6.9 million. Municipalities are responsible for 4.5 million. (File photo)
Eskom and municipalities are racing against time to update an outstanding 3.9 million prepaid meters before they expire at the end of November, which would leave affected consumers without access to electricity.
South Africa has 11.4 million prepaid meters in all, out of which Eskom is responsible for updating 6.9 million while municipalities are responsible for 4.5 million.
According to a dashboard that Eskom maintains, nearly four million of its meters have been updated, and there are just over 80 days left to process the rest before they stop working. The South African Local Government Associatio’s (Salga’s) dashboard shows that 3.5 million (77%) meters are updated with just over a million still needing to be re-coded.
In a separate update on the process, Eskom said it was “progressing well” with 54% of its meters having been updated as of 15 May.
If any meter is not upgraded by 8:15pm on 24 November, it will continue to disperse electricity until the existing credit is depleted, said Silas Mulaudzi, a sustainable energy specialist at Salga.
“Once it is depleted it will stop working and the consumer will be in the dark,” he said. “In that instance the customer should go to the municipality or to Eskom, depending on the electricity supplier for the area, and ask for the key-change token which will then allow them to input the credit token and have electricity post the expiry date.”
If a customer cannot go to the municipality or to Eskom — for those whose electricity is supplied by the utility — then they can call them to re-code the meter.
The meters need to be upgraded or re-coded because they use a particular technology called Standard Transfer Specification that allows the distributor, Eskom, to process the electricity generated at compliant vending systems, Mulaudzi explained.
“This technology was invented in 1993 and has a lifespan of 31 years. In 2024 the 31 years would have come to an end and it will need to be upgraded so it continues to disperse electricity,” he said.
The software is being converted to a base date of 2014, with another lifespan of 31 years, meaning that in 2045 the process will have to be repeated, Mulaudzi said.
He added that in some cases, faulty meters needed to be replaced.
“We have just over a million that we still need to re-code. We absolutely can do this by November,” he said.
Asked why Eskom and municipalities had left it this late to complete the updates, Mulaudzi said this was because of a “slow uptake” as well as financial constraints.
“In 2018, with our partner the Standard Transfer Specification Association, which owns the technology, we sent communication to municipalities telling them that they need to start planning on how they are going to upgrade meters. The communication has been there but there was slow uptake over the years,” he said.
“During Covid-19 we had a lot of workshops about this but there was slow uptake. Now we realise we need to move swiftly. There have been a lot of barriers such as finance to fund it and procurement issues so it finally picked up late in 2022, early 2023,” Mulaudzi said.
He could not say exactly what the rand cost of this programme will be, because some municipalities do the update themselves and others call service providers, or use both approaches.
“There are some financial requirements. These service providers who recode the meter charge R40 per meter and this is a 2021 figure. In a situation where the service provider had to change a meter because it is faulty that was R100 per meter in 2021. I am not sure what it costs now but you can understand the financial implications,” Mulaudzi said.
There are two ways to upgrade meters that are not faulty. Customers can do it themselves by getting two re-code tokens from their prepaid electricity vendor, which must then be keyed into the meter. Alternatively, customers can wait for Eskom or their municipality to do the update.
Dale McKinley, a political analyst at the International Labour Research and Information Group, said the process is simple, but there has been poor communication from Eskom and the municipalities on how to do it.
“It’s not a technical issue, per se, it’s more a communication issue and information issue,” McKinley said.
“Now they’ve left it so late, and then they try to squeeze in everything at the end, and then’ threaten people that they’re going to get cut off or they’re not going to have access, when, in fact, there should have been a longer term plan to do this over a longer period of time to make sure that everybody was on board.”
“There are north of three million meters that have not yet been updated with less than three months to go, “and that’s the concern”, he said.
“Can you imagine a situation where those who still haven’t done this, and then all of a sudden the reader doesn’t work. What do you do? Where do you have to go? If there’s no communication, no plan at a local level, then people are going to get upset.”