The Erongo Regional Electricity Distributor (Erongored) chief executive, Immanuel !Hanabeb, yesterday announced pending changes in the pre-paid metering system.
!Hanabeb told a press conference at Walvis Bay that Erongored had received directives from the Standard Transfer Specification (STS) Association regarding changes that will come into effect in November 2024.
It will affect Erongored meters and all STS-compliant meters all over the world.
To ensure STS compliance by November 2024, Erongored is upgrading its vending system software to the new STS6 standard.
It will allow the meters to accept new tokens that are bought after 24 November 2024.
All pre-payment meters have a token identifier (TID) within the meter to ensure that the same token cannot be reused.
From 24 November 2024, the meters will not accept the token numbers, as the TID would have reached its limit of identifying unique token numbers by that time.
“For these reasons, the pre-paid meters must be updated with a new token identifier and this is achieved by using a key change token so that they can accept the tokens generated after 24 November 2024. We have completed the process of upgrading our back-end infrastructure so that it is ready to accommodate the TID rollover,” said !Hanabeb.
The next phase of the project will include updating the meters, which will need customer input, by ensuring that their meters are updated using two 20-digit activation codes.
To activate the meters, customers can allow Erongored technicians or duly authorised agents into their premises to enter the key change token into the pre-paid meter, or they can request the key change token from the Erongored offices.
!Hanabeb urged customers to ensure that all prepaid tokens purchased prior to the date have been entered into the meter before they update their meters.
Erongored currently has over 39 416 prepaid meters that need to be updated to enable customers to consume electricity after 24 November 2024.
Over 7 409 meters, mostly in Omaruru, Karibib, Okombahe, Usakos, Uis, Omatjete and surrounding villages and settlement areas, have already been upgraded since mid-May and the process will be completed soon.
This represents about 19% of the meters that have been completed.
Erongored started with smaller areas so that maximum resources and time can be deployed in the two major towns, Walvis Bay with 37% and Swakopmund 33%.
Focus will be directed to Walvis Bay, Swakopmund, Henties Bay and Arandis for the next 12 months, where only 5% of the meters have been updated to date.
“Our customers should not be concerned or be worried. There is nothing sinister about TID rollover and it is not unique to Erongored only. TID rollover is necessary for continued service delivery and we would like to urge all our consumers to please support this initiative. We are committed to providing you with uninterrupted services and will continue to inform, educate and encourage all our customers to act now rather than be sorry later,” said !Hanabeb.
Erongored’s engineer for energy management and revenue protection, Maurice Jankowski, warned consumers against possible impostors, saying:
“Agents will carry Erongored identification cards. All our employees will wear their cards, but they can also be identified by the Erongored uniforms. The private contractors that we will use will also get Erongored identification cards. Customers must also check with our customer care call centre to make sure that we are in that area and running the project at that specific time,” he said.
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