{"id":787214,"date":"2024-08-16T10:44:49","date_gmt":"2024-08-16T08:44:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=787214"},"modified":"2024-08-16T10:52:16","modified_gmt":"2024-08-16T08:52:16","slug":"100-days-to-d-day-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/787214\/100-days-to-d-day-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"100 days to D-Day in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

South Africa has just 100 days left to switch over its prepaid meter software so they can continue functioning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

South Africa\u2019s current pre-paid electricity meter software, which generates unique recharge codes, will expire on 24 November 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eskom and municipalities across the country have been rolling out processes to update the software, but time is now running out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The prepaid meter update process requires a manual \u2018reset\u2019 code, which must be entered into the prepaid meter like normal recharge codes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If not done, residents will not be able to load electricity after the deadline.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Friday (16 August), the Western Cape confirmed that it had reset approximately 96% of all meters within its municipal supply areas versus the national average, which currently sits at 75.8%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are approximately 11.5 million prepaid meters in South Africa, most of which are Eskom’s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eskom oversees roughly 6.9 million of the STS-complaint prepaid meters in South Africa, while a further 4.6 million are in the homes and businesses of municipal customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Eskom’s key revision number dashboard<\/strong><\/a>, of the 6.9 million prepaid meters on its system, only 4 million are operating on the new system <\/strong>(as of 15 August 2024). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This poses a huge problem as 2.9 million Eskom customers alone still need to switch over<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Eskom’s data shows that 6.6 million prepaid meters have been ‘pre-coded’, which should make the process easier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pre-coding is an internal procedure where Eskom prepares the meters for issuing recoding tokens\u2014but this precedes the recoding<\/strong>, and relies on customers completing the switchover with a do-it-yourself (DIY) process.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With only 100 days remaining, this means that an average of 29,000 customers a day need to complete the rollover recoding process to meet the deadline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the recoding DIY process, customers whose pre-payment meters have been pre-coded for Key Revision Number (KRN) rollover are required to first purchase their top-up prepaid electricity tokens from authorised vendors and then input the provided key change tokens into their meters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The process is as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n