Electricity panic in South Africa – how to update your prepaid meter before it’s too late

South Africans are running out of time to update their prepaid electricity meters, with the deadline of 24 November just two days away.

Scenes of panic have erupted in some parts of the country as thousands of customers who failed to heed earlier warnings about the looming deadline queued for hours to get assistance from Eskom to upgrade their meters.

Eskom, municipalities and media outlets have spent the past year warning prepaid customers about the looming Token Identifier (TID) rollover deadline, where any meters still using KRN1 (Key Revision Number 1) will no longer accept electricity tokens after Sunday, 24 November 2024.

For anyone who has not yet upgraded, this means that once their current credit is depleted, they will lose power, and the meter will become inoperable, necessitating a meter replacement that could cost up to R12,000, which the customer will have to pay.

The rollover impacts roughly 11 million prepaid meters in South Africa, of which around 8.4 million have already been updated to KRN version 2 – which means 2 million or so meters still need to be upgraded.

Eskom has noted that the meters that have not yet been upgraded are likely to be those that have not purchased electricity for more than six months or might be using unauthorised tokens bought from criminal syndicates.

However, given the propensity to leave things to the last minute—as evidenced by the queues and 11th-hour panic—many simply neglected to heed the warnings and are looking to do the upgrade before it’s too late.

How to upgrade

The starting point is to check if your prepaid meter is updated or not:

• Enter the code 1844 6744 0738 4377 2416 on your meter keypad.
• If your meter displays “2,” “2.2,” or “r2: t2,” it has been upgraded to KRN2.
• If it displays “1” or “1.2,” you still need to upgrade to KRN2.
• If your meter displays a 1, it is still on KRN 1 and hasn’t been recoded yet.

Customers can recode their meters themselves by completing the following steps:

• Obtain two key change tokens from a legitimate prepaid electricity vendor — this includes banking apps and similar value-added service resellers
• Enter the first 20-digit recode token and wait for it to be accepted
• Enter the second 20-digit recode token and wait for it to be accepted
• Enter the 20 digits of your electricity voucher to recharge on KRN version 2

It’s important to note that once updated, any tokens purchased in advance won’t work on the updated meter.

If your meter does not accept the 20-digit codes and you have internet access, visit Eskom’s chatbot, Alfred, at http://alfred.eskom.co.za/chatroom.

Go to “update my details” and follow the instructions.

You will receive an SMS from Eskom guiding you on what to do. Once you’ve followed these instructions, you can continue loading your purchased codes.

If you do not have internet access, dial 12037566# on your mobile for further assistance

Customers who struggle to update their meter with these steps can also contact one of Eskom’s support lines for prepaid meter updates, which are provided in the table below.

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