Recall that last week, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission advised Nigerians to upgrade their metres before November next year to avoid losing them.
Assuring the citizenry about the developments, the Federal Government has said that the electricity metre upgrade process to be implemented by power distribution companies would not affect the credit unit balance in the metres.
In statement issued in Abuja by Nigerian Electricity Management Services Agency, reiterating that it would ensure that all electricity metres and instruments deployed in the sector were of the right standard.
“Let me assure all electricity customers that they have nothing to fear as the metre upgrade process will not affect the credit unit balance on their metres. The credit balance will remain intact after the upgrade.
“They are also to note that the metre upgrade is a one-time process. Subsequent energy token purchases will continue as usual after the upgrade has been completed,” the Managing Director, NEMSA, Aliyu Tahir, stated in the statement.
Tahir disclosed this while reacting to the issue of Standard Transfer Specification for the upgrade of prepaid metres by means of Token Identifier Rollover, which is set for commencement by the power distributors in Nigeria.
Tahir explained that in order to overcome the TID rollover occurrence, all metres would require key change tokens with the rollover bit set, which would be provided by the Discos.
He said when the key change tokens are imputed, the process would force the metres to reset the TID stack memory to zero and change the metre key at the same time.
“This process will not make energy metres faster or slower, hence, there is no need for panic, and the TID rollover will not alter or change the metrological properties of electricity metres that have been certified by NEMSA, to accurately measure and record electrical energy consumed.
“Metre 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 metres on the 2014 base date, as will be specified by their customers when they have updated their vending systems.
“Also, the distribution companies will provide their prepaid metre customers with Key Change Tokens alongside their regular energy tokens when purchasing electricity,” Tahir stated.
The NEMSA boss further stated that prepaid metre end-users would be involved in the final piece of the puzzle, which is the TID rollover key change process.
This process, he said, involves a special pair of tokens called a key change token that would be entered into the prepaid metre to finalise the update of the prepaid metre software.
