Apparently Eskom is busy rolling out their new smart meters in our area. Note this isn’t prepaid meters, I know some municipalities have smart prepaid rollouts as well.
This is direct Eskom customer, 3 phase post paid supply on a farm.
All I can find online about these smart meters is that it will allow Eskom to better manage the network, load reduction etc. If I understand, they will also be able to remotely disconnect if they pick up any tampering, abnormal use etc.
O and it will also allow for different time of use tarrifs.
I see for certain areas, they will also have a program where you can opt in for voluntary load reduction, then they will credit you with R90 per month should you comply. A sms will be sent a hour in advanced and if you switch off your heavy consumers during that period, you get credited.
Does anyone know more about these meters? I read somewhere that it might also allow real time usage readings via a a app or web portal.
One of the people on our area Whatsapp group said the meter have a SIM card in it, but what will Eskom do if there is no cell signal as is often the case in our area?
Even in suburban areas this can be a problem. Where I live was a test area for an early attempt at a meter that could be read remotely. Those meters had SIM cards in them.
COJ put the data retrieval out on contract. The lowest bidder got the contract, but they were also the worst cell company to have bid.
Added to that there was a militant ratepayers association who opposed every attempt to put up a cell mast. Blackberries were still a thing at the time I moved in here, and as you approached the area your Blackberry would start losing functionality as the signal degraded. We still don’t have 5G.
So the experiment with the meters failed. The company that provided them had to use the backup method to get readings. This involved driving around real slow with a bunny ears device dangling from the car.
OTOH a more recent smart meter trial in another area worked well. They tried the load reduction system you mention. During load shedding the residents in that area had to manage geysers and other big loads, but did still have lighting, WiFi and TV.
So yes, signal strength is a factor. You want all the really smart stuff, you need good cell connectivity.
I would expect that Eskom know they won’t have coverage across the whole country.
No offence, but we were down in the Eastern OFS a couple of years back. Clarens has all the bells & whistles. But the next town down the road, Fouriesberg, didn’t even have a Vodacom signal. Well it did, but the tower is in Lesotho so you had to pay roaming rates. No fibre! ADSL was available.
At least where I live we have fibre options even if we don’t have 5G. This does nothing for smart meters. I have prepaid.
Not all areas are equal. In Sandton there is loads of 5G and you can get really fast downloads.
On another matter, I can see why the smart meter is desirable for utilities. It’s a PITA reading meters. Where I live meters are all on the property, and most of the time the meter reader can’t get access. Then folks get frustrated by estimated readings, but what else can the City do? The answer, of course, is smart meters. If you can reliably interrogate those meters remotely then the problem with readings should go away.
OK… some parts of the area serviced by City Power still have the meters in a box in the street. So they don’t need smart meters there.
Except they do, for the reasons that you have already described. For smart, co-operative load reduction, and so they can introduce TOU tariffs.
How does Eskom read your meter right now? I can’t see that a smart meter is going to make anything worse, as long as they can still make use of existing procedures in areas with poor cell service.
I send them my reading every month via the app and every 3 months a Eskom tech comes to take the reading, I assume to double check if I’ve been lying to them.
The first problem I can see with the smart meter is communication issues due to cell signal on the day the reading is due, then next moment I get one hell of a bill because they estimated it.
Of course in a ideal world the system can send me a message if it can’t read the meter due to connectivity issues and ask me to send the reading in mannually like I have always done, but I don’t see this happening with Eskom in SA.
The message will probably come through 3 days too late, like the other day when we had a outage for 10 hours because they were replacing some poles, I received a message that there will be a outage the next morning, 14 hours after the outage.
Ja. This is the problem where I live - as I described. For smart anything to work you need good cell coverage. In my area it was more or less a permanent problem. And probably still is. I notice when I take my exercise in the mornings that there are certain streets where data connections are really bad. Inside the home you’ll be OK because there is fiber throughout the suburb, but anything that relies on a SIM is going to struggle.
So we do have smart meters but there is lots of unhappiness about estimated readings, and the City has to send meter readers out. They often cannot get access to the meter and so the problem is compounded. If we just had better cell coverage then these problems would go away.
If you’re wondering about me, I have prepaid, so nobody needs to read my meter.
The reality is that we need reliable cell coverage everywhere.
My smart meter was installed earlier, just when the contractor arrived it started pooring with rain, so I sat him under the lapa and gave him some coffee, till the rain gave us a break.
He couldn’t tell me much about the new meter, except that I will have to still send Eskom the next reading, but after that the reading will be automatic every month. He just said as far as he knows the meter have plenty features, but he doesn’t know which of the features Eskom will use.
He also couldn’t tell me on which network it runs, we currently for example have no MTN coverage in the area, the MTN tower close bye got struck by lightning last night.
I also can’t fiddle with the meter because he locked the box it is in. Traditionally Eskom always locked the box on their side of the pole, but since we bought the property 3 years ago, the Eskom box has always been open, till now.
Yep, the smart meters have SIM cards. If there’s no signal, they just store the data and send it later. Mainly for load management, time-of-use tariffs, and remote monitoring. That R90 load reduction thing sounds pretty cool. Real-time app/portal is coming but not fully live yet.
Is there another way for them to interrogate the meter? If it gets to TOU billing then a meter reader taking a photo of the total on the meter is no longer enough.
