The Nigerian Electricity Management Services Agency (NEMSA) has assured electricity consumers using pre-paid meters that units already purchased will not be lost during the imminent upgrade of their meters nationwide.
The Head Communication and Protocol Unit, Mrs. Ama Umoren, in a statement on Sunday attributed the assurance to the Managing Director of NEMSA, Mr. Tukur Tahir, in response to enquiries from consumers over the ongoing discussion on Standard Transfer Specification (STS) of prepaid meters upgrading by means of Token Identifier (TID) rollover.
The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) had recently directed electricity customers to update their metering devices or face recharging challenges as from next year.
According to the industry regulator, the process of updating is free of charge and all a customer needs to go to the offices of their power distribution companies (Discos) to understand the process.
Umoren stated that the agency’s boss advised electricity consumers not to panic, stressing that the token Identifier was a 24-bit field, contained in STS and also assured the public of the agency’s readiness to ensure that all electricity meters and instruments deployed in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) are of high quality.
Tahir clarified: “The TID represents the number of minutes elapsed since the base date of 1st January 1993. The incrementing of the 24-bit field means that at some point in time, the TID value will roll over to a zero value.
”In order to overcome the TID rollover occurrence, all meters will require key change tokens with the roll over bit set which will be provided by the utility companies when the key change tokens are imputed”, he added.
According to him, the process will force the meters to reset the TID stack memory to 0 and change the meter key at the same time but will not make energy meters faster or slower hence there is no need for consumer to panic as the TID rollover will not alter or change the meteorological properties of electricity meters.
The NEMSA CEO assured: ”That have been certified by NEMSA, to accurately measure and record electrical energy consumed. Meter manufacturers will be required to change their production processes in order to cater for the new manufacturing hardware secure modules and key load files.
“They are also required to start manufacturing meters on the 2014 base date as will be specified by their customers when they have updated their vending systems.
“Also, that the Distribution Companies (DisCos) will provide their prepaid meter customers Key Change Tokens (KCT) alongside their regular energy tokens when purchasing electricity. The prepaid meter end-users would be involved in the final piece of the TID rollover key change process.
“The process would involve a special pair of tokens called a Key Change Token (KCT) that would be entered into the prepaid meter to finalise the update of the prepaid meter software.
“Customers must upgrade their prepaid meters by sequentially entering the two KCT tokens (KCT1 & KCT2) and then the energy token, to be provided by the DisCo.
”Customers must ensure that any unused or previously purchased energy tokens are loaded into their meters before the expiry date.
”Subsequent energy token purchases will continue as usual after the upgrade has been completed”, he added.
