City Power has begun its installation and reset of prepaid electricity meters in Johannesburg before they all stop working next year.

The electricity entity began visiting customers in residential homes in Hursthill on Wednesday, with 200 City Power agents targeting 4 000 households daily.

There are 275 353 prepaid electricity meters that the City is responsible for, according to data on a South African Local Government Association dashboard.

It will take the City less than 70 days to complete the project if City Power hits its 4 000-a-day target.

The City of Cape Town started its project late in 2021 and budgeted two years to complete it.

The City of Cape Town has 637 414 meters that it is responsible for updating.

The problem that has made the meter update necessary is baked into the code of every prepaid meter in the world.

When an electricity meter user wants to load electricity, a 20-digit token is entered, which loads credit onto the meter.

One of the ways that the meter designers ensured that every token generated was unique, which is essential to prevent two prepaid customers from entering the same token into their meter, was to attach the token to the minute it was bought at.

However, when the meters were rolled out on 1 January 1993, there were only so many minutes that could be programmed to be attached to a token. This was because the 20-digit number would be too long if more minutes were programmed in.

More than 16-million minutes were programmed into the vending system. If you count forward from 1 January 1993, you happen to hit the deadline for the total amount of minutes that can be attached to a token on 24 November 2024.

After this date, all 10-million prepaid meters in South Africa and all 70-million meters worldwide will stop working, leaving their customers in the dark, unless the meters are updated. 

This date rollover issue is known as the token identifier (TID) rollover.

To update a meter, two unique update tokens need to be entered into every meter in the correct order –  and the meter will then be ready for operation beyond 24 November 2024.

Smart meters

The other way to avoid meters becoming non-functional is to replace the old prepaid electricity meters with smart meters.

Smart meters are significantly more advanced than standard prepaid electricity meters because it can be read remotely, as it allows for a bi-directional connection.

It is, however, significantly more expensive than standard prepaid meters.

Installing smart meters seems to be a priority for City Power.

City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said most of the meters are not SMART and the TID resetting entails that every non-smart (old technology) meter should be replaced with the new technology meters and reset to be TID compliant.

"City Power's smart meter project also aims to address the ongoing energy crisis. Loadshedding has a huge impact on the residents of Johannesburg, businesses, and the rest of the country.

"The installed smart meters will, in addition, assist us and the residents of Johannesburg in reducing electricity consumption through the usage of remote load-limiting functions and ultimately contribute to the management and reduction of loadshedding.

"With these gadgets, City Power will be able to do load-limiting every time Eskom demands some megawatts, or when consumption reaches critical levels."

The programme will target poorer communities and ensure unmetered customers have smart meters.

Residents watch out

City Power will be sending out designated task teams to perform the rollover, on people's behalf, by generating and entering in the numbers required for the rollover into every meter.

This is different from the method that has been followed by the City of Cape Town, and which will be followed by Eskom, where the required tokens will be given to meter users themselves to enter.

Mangena appealed to residents for cooperation "and to allow our officials to gain access to their properties during the implementation of this task".

The officials will be wearing TID-branded clothing and have a valid ID card, with an ID photo, in their possession.

In the past, meter initiatives in Johannesburg have run into issues.

In 2015, protests in Soweto turned violent after Eskom contractors tried to install prepaid meters in the area. 

In 2019, Soweto protests again turned violent after Eskom vowed not to continue repairing faulty equipment, where there was non-payment for electricity.

The entity found that illegal connections and tampering of prepaid meters were leading to an overload of the system, which resulted in power outages.

On Wednesday Mangena said: "Overall, the reaction of some customers has been good and they allowed our authorised agents entry to their properties in order to audit their meters, however, there were a few that resisted and did not allow our team entry as they were sceptical."