Electricity distribution companies (DisCos) in Lagos are set to upgrade customers’ meters to the new Standard Transfer Specification (STS).
Industry sources cited by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in a report indicated that the upgrade of meters would start in August and expected to be completed before November 2024.
According to the DisCos, the STS is a metering code is not designed to increase electricity tariffs but functions as software which operates as a secure message system for carrying information between a point of sale (PoS) and a meter.
One of the companies’ chiefs reportedly said: “Some have scheduled for Aug. 1, but ours is not the same date. However, it will be done before the expiring date of November 2024.
“We will ensure the migration is seamless for our customers on the STS TID rollover system. The software will be upgraded without affecting the reading or payment model.
“In the electricity process, there are intelligent units that transfer the load to an alternative source.
“The technology of remote communication makes possible the function and recharge of the prepaid meter”, he added.
According to the news report, the TID – Token Identifier is a 24-bit field contained in an STS-compliant token that identifies the date and time of the token generation and is used to determine if a token had already been used in a payment meter.
The industry chiefs added that the upper limit for the software would be reached by November 2024, noting that would lead the rollover to zero, citing that this would be needed for the TID rollover for meter upgrade to enable meter recharge.
In addition, the operators disclosed that customers needed to upgrade their meters by using a Key Change Token (KCT), a special rest token, to be loaded on their meters and that the KCT could be gotten from the DisCos offices or their agents at the point of purchase of a token alongside the purchased energy tokens.
They explained that customers would only need to use KCT once and subsequent energy purchases will be as usual and there would not be any need for change of their meters before upgrade, except a meter had become obsolete or faulty.
