Time's ticking: Update prepaid electricity and water meters before deadline

Time’s ticking: Update prepaid electricity and water meters before deadline

Before the end of this year, electricity and water meters will stop working if they are not updated.

Just more than 200 days away, the deadline to update prepaid electricity and water meters in the Western Cape is November 24.

Failure to complete the reset will leave residents unable to buy electricity and municipalities unable to generate revenue from the sale of prepaid electricity or water.

Used by more than 500 power utilities across the world, the Standard Transfer Specification (STS) is the primary global standard protocol for the transfer of electricity and other utility prepayment tokens.

According to the STS Association, there are approximately 10 million STS meters in South Africa, 7 million of which are in Eskom service areas, and 3 million in municipal service areas.

The update is required because the standard system that provides unique recharge codes will soon run out of unique numbers A “reset” code for each pre-paid meter is therefore needed to ensure that residents can continue to receive unique codes beyond November 24.

This can be simply entered into the meter in the same way that normal recharge voucher codes are entered.

“We have an estimated 1 047 682 municipal meters in the province, and as of April 30 approximately 88.1% have been updated, up from 82.5% at the beginning of April this year. We are making steady progress in the switchover of pre-paid water and electricity meters in the Western Cape, but now is the time to ramp up efforts to complete the process to avoid disaster come November 24, 2024,” said Western Cape Finance and Economic Opportunities MEC Mireille Wenger.

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Cape Times