What happens if you miss Eskom’s new prepaid meter deadline
Power utility Eskom has set a new deadline for so-called ‘zero buyers’ to come forward and convert their prepaid electricity meters to the new KRN2 system and become paying customers.
Should these electricity users not come forward before 13 December 2024, they risk being disconnected, Eskom said, while fines and other penalties will still apply.
The group announced this week that around 400,000 zero-buyers had been converted to paying customers following mild panic around the 24 November deadline to convert KRN1 meters to the new KRN2 update.
“Zero buyers” is a euphemistic term used by Eskom to describe customers using electricity but not paying for it through legitimate channels, or at all. These customers were/are either purchasing units from ‘ghost’ vendors or may have bypassed or tampered with their meters.
Ahead of the 24 November deadline, Eskom reported around 2.1 million prepaid units as being these types of users. Following the deadline, 1.7 million remain.
As part of the utility’s strategy to clamp down on non-vending meters, tampering and illegal power use, the group set a new deadline—13 December 2024—to ‘assist’ zero-buyers in converting.
The utility confirmed to BusinessTech that it hopes to have all remaining zero-buyer customers convert by this date.
“We hope that (by) the deadline, all the customers may at least have made their meters KRN2 compliant,” it said.
After this date, “(we) will continue assisting those who may still be experiencing issues, monitoring the payment of fines, replacing meters, continuing to issue tamper fines, and disconnecting those who did not come forward,” Eskom said.
The deadline being set, as well as the deadline set by the City of Joburg’s power utility, City Power, appears to be arbitrary.
City Power said it has codes for all its outstanding meters and set a deadline of 31 May 2025 for late conversions to occur.
On a technical level, while meters on KRN1 can no longer accept electricity vouchers, it is still possible to perform the update to KRN2 as long as the codes to do so can be sourced.
Fines and penalties
A bigger focus with the setting of deadlines seems to be to ‘encourage’ non-paying electricity users to become paying customers.
This encouragement comes with threats of steep fines and penalties.
Eskom has previously warned that any meters that are not converted and are dispensing legally could carry a ‘replacement cost’ of R12,000. This is ostensibly for units that have been physically tampered with, as the conversion process carries no cost.
As part of its revenue protection measures, Eskom fines customers with illegal connections around R6,000. Only after this fine has been paid will it reconnect the customer.
City Power has stated that it won’t charge customers to replace any meters that have been tampered with, but it still charges penalties, which the utility has suspended until 30 November so that customers can get reconnected immediately.
Similarly, the City of Tshwane has also thrown around large penalties as a threat to anyone using electricity illegally.
The metro is on an inspection blitz, looking at the 112,000 or so prepaid meters that were not converted by the 24 November deadline, threatening a R29,000 ‘tamper fee’ for any found to be operating illegally.
“(Thswane) has decided to allow customers to enter into payment agreements. Customers will be required to go to municipal customer care offices to make the necessary payment arrangements, and their meters will be normalised and/or replaced,” it said.
The close to 2 million non-paying customers are a significant drain on municipalities and Eskom, costing upwards of R2 billion a month or over R24 billion a year.
Eskom CEO Dan Marokane said the group is doing everything “practically possible” to make users pay for the electricity they use.
“(This) in the interest of those who already pay for electricity, maintain the sustainability of Eskom to drive the economic growth of South Africa and reduce our burden on the taxpayer,” he said.
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