About 8 million prepaid electricity metres in South Africa need to be reset before November 2024 as the mechanism used to manage, control and prevent credit token reuse, will run out of numbers at this time and all existing meters will stop accepting credit tokens.
This is according to Lance Hawkins-Dady, Research and Development Manager at the leading metering company Conlog (Pty) Ltd and Chairperson of the Standard Transfer Specification Association, STSA, the South African metering standards industry body.
The Association has embarked on an awareness programme to inform utilities about the “TID Rollover Programme” before the deadline of November 24, 2024.
Currently, all tokens contain a Token Identifie, TID that is calculated on a base date of 1993. The TID is used to uniquely identify each token so that tokens cannot be used more than once.
The TID will reach its maximum value in 2024. When this happens, all tokens will be considered as old and will no longer be accepted by the prepaid meters. The only way to prevent tokens being rejected after November 24, 2024 is for end users of the STS technology to have successfully completed the TID Rollover programme.
It is estimated that there about 7 million metres currently in South Africa alone and this is expected to reach 8 million by 2024.
Hawkins-Dady says “it is difficult to predict how many metres are installed globally however we estimate this figure to be anywhere between 60 to 70 million. As more electricity meters are rolled out and with both gas and water utilities adopting the STS specification, the number of STS prepayment meters will increase rapidly.”
The latest advances and challenges in the metering and smart energy industry are coming at a time when the Nigeria electricity distribution companies are struggling to install prepaid meters for their customers.
