The South African metering standards industry body Standard Transfer Specification Association (STSA) will hold a workshop presentation and take part in the strategic conference during the African Utility Week (AUW) to urge the utilities industry to upgrade electricity meters to STS600.

STSA is a returning industry partner association and exhibitor at the upcoming AUW conference. STSA director Don Taylor and STSA technical consultant Franco Pucci are both speakers at AUW workshops and in the strategic conference.

According to the STSA, about seven- million prepaid electricity meters in South Africa need to be reset before November 2024 as the system that runs the credit tokens will run out of numbers and all existing meters will stop accepting credit tokens.

STSA says utilities have a six-year window to complete the upgrade, therefore it has set out to encourage utilities to upgrade their vending systems and to visit each meter in every region to clear the memory and change the meter key before November 2024.

“The new range of token identifiers (TIDs) will then start from a new base date of 2014 and run out in 2045, thus extending the useful functional life of the meter. To do this key change, it is necessary that each meter has to be physically visited, which can be performed either by dedicated employees of the utility or by the end customer,” explains Taylor.

He says STSA is embarking on an awareness programme by reaching out to all STSA users and providing a platform that will facilitate technical support and guidance to users during the implementation of the TID rollover programme.

“We aim to establish a website for this purpose where users can interact by discussion of issues. Additionally, we are embarking on a communication effort with users by making use of media channels and conference events in order to raise awareness of the 2024 TID rollover,” concludes Taylor.