Almost 2 million Eskom prepaid meters will stop working in 6 months at current update pace

If Eskom maintains its current pace of prepaid electricity meter updates, 1.75 million of its prepaid electricity customers will have their meters go dark on the same day in six months time.

Eskom released a media statement on Thursday claiming that the utility was on track to avoid an electricity vending disaster later this year, given its current progress with the update. But simple calculations show that this is not likely.

On 24 November this year, STS-prepaid vending systems, of which there are more than 11.5 million in South Africa and 70 million in the world, will all stop working owing to a date rollover issue affecting the system, which essentially means there will be no more valid token combinations for users to load credit.