The Kenya Power prepaid meters are running on a software that is set to be rendered obsolete by November 24th this year. When this happens, Kenya Power customers will not be able to feed tokens into the meter. Essentially, customers may find themselves without electricity access.
Kenya power has set the period between now and November as a time to earnestly perform software upgrades to meters countrywide.
“To ensure functioning of all the meters after this date, it is necessary to perform token identifier (TID) rollover by resetting the TID memory from zero. This will be done through the use of a key change token (KCT) which is a set of two 20-digit numbers that is input into a meter when the meter’s functionality needs to be reconfigured or changed,” Mr Marete, Kenya Power Manager for Coast region said.
Kenyans are urged to be on the look out for the utility firms’ employees who will have identification badges to ease verification. The company has also promised to work with local authorities and security personnel to curb the risk of impersonation during the exercise.
Notably, there’s a deadline to use your tokens! Any tokens you buy that aren’t used by deadline date will be worthless.
“Once the rollover is complete the prepaid meter will not accept old tokens. It is therefore very critical to carry out the rollover smoothly to avoid disruptions because when it’s done, meters will reject tokens from authorised vendors,” Mr Marete said.
Mr Marete said the whole process will be free and Kenya Power will only send customers a code to be keyed into their meters.
Kenya Power isn’t alone in facing meter software problems. About 70 million standard transfer specification (STS) prepaid meters in over 40 countries, used by more than 500 utilities, are impacted.
