• The City of Johannesburg’s prepaid system will cease dispensing tokens in 2024.
• This is a limitation of the system which has been in place since 1993.
• Residents will need to cooperate with officials who will replace or upgrade prepaid meters.

Residents in Johannesburg who make use of a prepaid electricity meter will soon have to replace these according to a statement from the City of Johannesburg.

On Monday, the municipality announced that it would embark on a programme to upgrade smart meters and replace older models. Why is the City of Johannesburg doing this? Well, come 24th November 2024, the system the municipality uses will run out of unique voucher tokens.

“This is a system linked limitation and not unexpected, however with the recent articles published in the media, it has caused quite a panic in the public space. We certainly do not want to scramble at the last minute and want to ensure that prepaid electricity customers continue to receive services when the new system kicks in towards the end of 2024,” member of the mayoral committee, Michael Sun said in a statement.

The system the city uses is known as the Standard Transfer Specification (STS) which works in tandem with the Token Identifier (TID) System. Together these systems insure that when a token is purchased for a specific meter, it can only be using by that meter once.

“When the time comes, the prepaid meters will stop accepting new credit tokens and will then stop dispensing electricity after the existing credits are used up,” says Sun.

As such, the municipality will be working to replace these meters which means City of Johannesburg staff will need to enter your premises.

To that end, City of Johannesburg has highlighted how to identify its officials.

When staff arrive you should ask to see a staff card which contains the following information:

• Name of the official,
• The ID number of the official,
• The department they are from,
• And expiry date with a colour coded strip (Blue is for permanent employees, Green is for meter readers, Purple is for contractors, Red is for Cut off team and Black is for interns/temporary staff).

The back of the card should also feature a hologram of the City Power Firefly logo and a contact number for the Risk Team. You can and should verify that the official is from City Power using the following numbers 011 490 7900 alternatively you can try 011 490 7911 and 011 490 7553.

“I urge customers with the affected meters in Johannesburg to cooperate with the City Power officials when they arrive on your premises to upgrade or replace your meters,” adds Sun.

It’s not entirely clear which meters are affected by this upgrade and replacement drive but given that you won’t have power if the unit isn’t replaced, it’s best to cooperate with City of Johannesburg.