Prepaid electricity meters worldwide will stop working on November 24, if they are not updated. South Africa has roughly 10 million prepaid meter owners and many run the risk of being left in the dark if Eskom and municipalities do not take urgent action.

Sadly, other than enquiring with your service provider about when they will start the rollover, meter owners are powerless to speed up the process.

To roll over meters and reset them to a new 20-year lifespan, owners will need two 20-digit key change tokens – the old code and a new one. These must be entered one after the other.

The process can happen in two ways: Either by a municipal or an Eskom team travelling from one household to the next to roll over meters on their owners’ behalf, or by power utilities supplying customers with the required tokens so they can update their prepaid meters themselves.

Don Taylor, chairman of the Standard Transfer Specification Association, who is heading the rollover project, says power utilities are in control of the token vending system that generates and dispenses key change tokens.

According to Taylor, there is a delay in issuing tokens because vending systems must be upgraded before they can do so and the rollover process can start. In addition, upgrading vending systems does not happen overnight.

In January, Eskom told ESI-Africa that they are responsible for about 6.5 million prepaid electricity meters and the rest (estimated to be between 3.5 and 4.5 million) is are managed by local municipalities.

Eskom released a statement in August 2021 that they would start with the upgrading of prepaid meters in Gauteng, with the first phase kicking off in Fourways, Johannesburg.

By October 2022, a Business Live report suggested that Eskom had rolled over very few meters since the initial announcement, even though they were informed 10 years ago that it would have to be done.

Media enquiries to the Eskom spokesperson, Daphne Mokwena, about how many customers still have to be reached and if it can be done before the cut-off date, remain unanswered.

An online data tracker set up by the South African Local Government Association (Salga), on which municipalities must self-record the number of prepaid meters in their areas, contains are inaccurate information, with some meters’ details entered as many as three times and others not entered at all, according to energy specialist Silas Mulaudzi.

Mulaudzi told News24 earlier this month that out of 164 municipalities with prepaid meters, 90 have logged data and 70 have not.

By yesterday (May 25), the dashboard on the Salga website showed that the Western Cape had the most municipalities that had submitted data and started with rollover projects, while few municipalities had started the process in Limpopo, Mpumalanga and North West.

This week, the Alberton Record published a notification that the City of Ekurhuleni will start with a rollover project in Edenvale and Nigel on June 1, with other areas announced as the project progresses.

Taylor says that reports that prepaid meters will become non-functional if the codes are not entered correctly or if it is done after November 2024 are not true.

“The meter does not become non-functional if the key change tokens are not correctly entered – the meter will simply reject incorrect token entries and allow the consumer to keep on retrying until the tokens are correctly entered. This remains true even after November 2024, so there is no risk associated with this action.”

• Salga spokesperson Sivuyile Mbambato did not reply to questions about how many municipalities have started, how many are up to date, and how many have not initiated roll-over projects at all.