Eskom

Yes, Your Private Prepaid Meter May also be Affected

4 October 2024 By Alan

South Africa’s TID Rollover Progress
Dashboard reports NO progress from Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality
86% of Municipal prepaid meters have been upgraded
Eskom still has to issue 2.9 Million Key Change Tokens
92 941 meters need to be updated per day to reach 24 November 2024 deadline

SALGA has established a dashboard where the status of TID rollover meter reset is displayed. The dashboard consists of various parameters on the TID rollover data, such as total number of prepayment meters to be reset, number of prepayment meters that have been reset per municipality, outstanding number of prepayment meters. It is from this background that SALGA will collect data from municipalities on a quarterly basis by means of an online questionnaire.

Want to know how your municipality is performing?

Select the drop down for your province
Tick the box for your municipality
Read the results

SALGA’s main dashboard reports that 3 615 285 (86%) or prepaid meters have been reset with 599 030 (14%) meters outstanding.

The above numbers do NOT include Eskom’s direct clients using prepaid electricity meters – those numbers are worse: Eskom’s KRN rollover started in August 2023, but in the 14 months since, it has updated less than 60% of the 6.9 million prepaid meters on its database.

That would make around 10.5 Million municipal or Eskom direct prepaid electricity meters installed in South Africa.

The above numbers DO NOT include the massive prepaid meter numbers installed by companies like Straton Prepaid, though. That market is serviced by around 512 Payment Processing companies and the number of units installed is a moving target hard to pinpoint.

Eskom’s Key Revision Number Dashboard:

Eskom Dashboard.

Key change tokens are issued as clients purchase electricity – the process is two fold:

Eskom will decide which area will become ‘live’
When clients purchase electricity they will receive two key change tokens from the local or online vendor that they need to key into the keypad.

Meters that have not been upgraded will stop working after 24 November 2024.

Click here: https://straton.co.za/pre-paid/need-to-confirm-that-your-prepaid-meter-has-been-upgraded/ to check if your meter HAS been upgraded.

We THINK that we may have spotted a concern with the dashboard, though:

We selected the Eastern Cape and then Nelson Mandela Bay and the numbers reported showed that of the 145 576 prepaid meters to be reset NONE had been done so.

Local residents are well aware of this reset as they receive notifications on their purchase slips and via adverts on local radio stations.

Let us assume the best case scenario that the numbers of prepaid meters reset have just not been reported to SALGA by the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality to update the dashboard!

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES – This reset exercise will reveal the meter numbers that may:

Not be working
Be bypassed
Topped up via nefarious means

And this represents a potential recovered revenue stream for municipalities and Eskom alike – we will wait and see if these income streams will have a downward pressure on future increases!

Compulsory Prepaid Electricity proposed for all South Africans

29 September 2016 By Alan

Eskom CEO Brian Molefe is of the view that legislation in South Africa should be changed, making it standard to use prepaid electricity.

Speaking to MPs during a parliamentary briefing with Eskom and the Select Committee on Communications and Public Enterprises about the power utility’s tariff hike for 2016 to 2017, Molefe said prepaid electricity would go a long way towards curbing Eskom’s losses due to non-collection and illegal electricity connections.

“I know it’s been said in the media that I – Brian Molefe – am not supposed to say anything about energy policy,” he said in reference to a report that National Treasury was unhappy about his utterances on independent power producers.

“If you would allow me to just say as a lowly official – we think prepaid electricity should be standardised. If we have it through the entire country it would resolve our problems, and the shortest way is by introducing legislation on prepaid.”

Molefe also proposed that Eskom “step in”, install prepaid meters and collect revenue and then pass on to municipalities the portion of collections due to them. “That will take away the burden of collection. So the municipality will still get their revenue, but Eskom becomes the collecting agent.”

Molefe added that Eskom would also be happy if legislation is introduced that allows the utility to appeal energy regulator Nersa’s decisions. “Currently if one party is unhappy – Eskom in this case – about an aspect in the Nersa ruling there is no way we can appeal, except maybe to (go to) the courts. We’d be happy if we could appeal if we feel there was an error in the calculations.”

Consumers who receive power from municipalities paid 7.64% more for electricity since the beginning of July. This comes after Nersa approved a 9.4% hike for 2016 to 2017.

Source: South Africa: Molefe Moots Compulsory Prepaid Electricity for All – allAfrica.com

Prepaid meters increase collection rate

15 September 2016 By Alan

Eskom has already seen a ZAR39 million improvement of revenue collection in Soweto over a year-long period after it installed and converted customers to split prepaid meters.
The figure is cumulative from the 2014/15 financial year up to 30 June 2016.

The revenue collection levels for customers – including Large Power Users (LPU), Prepaid Power Users (PPU) and Small Power Users (SPU) and excluding bulk suppliers – are currently at 48%.

Soweto has approximately 181 000 customers, about 65% of whom are customers who are on conventionally-billed metering system and the remainder are on conventional prepaid metering system.
We have installed over 41 628 split meters and converted 24 746 to prepaid and are planning to accelerate the roll out of prepaid meters in Soweto.

The conversions of the meters have also resulted in a gradual increase in sales.

Eskom is currently installing prepaid meters in Sandton, Midrand, Soweto, Kagiso and other areas around Gauteng.
This is in order to enable revenue collection and address Eskom’s debt collection challenges.

In Sandton and Midrand alone, Eskom connected close to 14 700 meters from March 2016 to date.
The company aims to complete the installation of 32 000 prepaid meters in Sandton and Midrand by end of March 2017

Source: Prepaid meter conversions in Soweto improves revenue collection by ZAR39 million | BizNis Africa

Eskom plans to install 140 000 prepaid meters in Soweto

4 May 2016 By Alan

Eskom says Soweto residents are starting to understand the relevance of prepaid electricity meters, adding that it plans to install 140,000 meters in the area, in the next three to five years.

Last year, community members took to the streets demanding engagement with the parastatal about the prepaid meters and a way forward in terms of dealing with the municipality’s R8 billion debt.

So far, 40,000 meters have been installed in the area….

Source: Soweto residents warming up to Eskom idea of prepaid meters

Eskom converting all credit customers to prepaid

20 April 2016 By Alan

Eskom has made a strategic decision to convert all of its conventionally billed customers to prepaid meters.

It says this project will enhance its revenue which is an important focus area to support its financial sustainability efforts.

“Customers are encouraged to convert from their conventional meters to the prepaid billing mode as it has several benefits such as improved reliability‚ reduction of public safety incidents and better management of energy consumption. More importantly‚ the days of billing errors will be a thing of the past‚” the electricity provider says.

In Sandton and Midrand‚ the plan is to have all 32‚885 of its domestic customers with smart meters installed and converted to prepaid meters by the end of the 2016/17 financial year….

Source: Eskom installs almost 6‚000 smart meters in Sandton and Midrand – Times LIVE