Millions of prepaid electricity meters in South Africa faced a shutdown after failing to update before the November 24, 2024 deadline. The issue stemmed from a security mechanism in the electricity token system that ran out of available identifiers. A key revision number update was implemented to extend the system's lifespan and prevent widespread disruption.
The deadline for updating prepaid meters in South Africa to avoid them refusing new electricity units has passed, and roughly 2.1 million did not receive their updates on time.
The system only allows for around 16.7 million minutes of TIDs to be issued from a set base date. This base date was initially 1 January 1993, with a mechanism to update it. The STS Association developed a simple fix dubbed the key revision number update to change the base date to 1 January 2014, providing another 31 years of TIDs lasting until November 2045.
While they had been warned about the issue over a decade ago, Eskom and some local municipalities rushed to get customers to do their updates in the past year. Municipalities were far more successful than Eskom in getting their customers to update, with more than 3.85 million of their affected 4.1 million meters on KRN 2 by 24 November 2024.The screenshots below show the Eskom and municipal KRN rollover dashboards by 24 November 2024.It is important to emphasise that non-functioning meters can still be updated to accept new vouchers again for customers who have already been issued with their key change tokens.
With KRN 1-based tokens no longer being accepted, all so-called lost or stolen “ghost” vending machines have effectively become useless.
South Africa Prepaid Meters Electricity Tokens STS KRN Update
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