The token identifier roll over key change in installed prepaid electricity meters will guarantee safety of lives and property as well as accurately measure and record electrical energy consumed, the Nigerian Electricity Management Services Agency (NEMSA) has assured.
The Managing Director/CEO of NEMSA, Aliyu Tukur Tahir, who gave the assurance in Abuja on Sunday said consumers of electricity with installed prepaid meters have no reason to worry about the exercise.
NEMSA is the sole agency of the government established through the enabling NEMSA Act of 2015 to regulate and enforce technical standards, inspection, testing and certification of all categories of electrical installations, electricity meters and instruments to ensure an efficient production and delivery of safe, reliable and sustainable electricity power supply and guarantee safety of lives and property in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI), allied industries/workplaces and premises.
Tahir, who is also the Chief Electrical Inspector of the Federation, said NEMSA was ready to ensure all electricity meters and instruments deployed in the NESI were of the right standard, specification, safety and quality to accurately measure and record electrical energy consumed as well as guarantee safety of lives and property.
He was reacting to public enquiries, especially from electricity consumers, over the ongoing discussions on the issue of Standard Transfer Specification (STS) prepaid meters upgrading by means of Token Identifier (TID) rollover set to commence soon by the electricity distribution companies in the country.
Noting the concern of consumers, the NEMSA Chief explained that the token identifier was a 24-bit field, contained in STS compliant tokens, to identify the date and time of the token generation used to determine if it has already been used in another prepaid meter.
“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”, he clarified.
To overcome the TID rollover occurrence, he said all meters would require key change tokens with the roll over bit set to be provided by the DISCos when the key change tokens were imputed, to force the meters to reset the TID stack memory to zero and at the same time change the meter key.
The MD said this process would not make energy meters fast or slower, therefore no need for consumers to panic.
He reassured consumers that the TID rollover would not alter or change the metrological properties of electricity meters that have been certified by NEMSA, to accurately measure and record electrical energy consumed.
Meter manufacturers, he said, would be required to change their production processes in order to cater for the new manufacturing hardware secure modules and key load files.
Also, he said the manufacturers would be required to start manufacturing meters on the 2014 base date as would be specified by their customers when they have updated their vending systems.
In addition, he said the DisCos would be expected to provide their prepaid meter customers Key Change Tokens (KCT) alongside their regular energy tokens when purchasing electricity.
Besides, he said the prepaid meter end-users would be involved in the TID rollover key change process described as the final piece of the puzzle.
The TID rollover key change process, he said, would involve a special pair of tokens called a key change token (KCT) that would be entered into the prepaid meter to finalize 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,while customers must ensure that any unused or previously purchased energy tokens were loaded into their meters before the expiry date.
“Let me assure all electricity customers that they have nothing to fear as the meter upgrade process will not affect the credit unit balance on their meters. The credit balance will remain intact after the upgrade. They are also to note that meter upgrade is a one-time process. Subsequent energy token purchases will continue as usual after the upgrade has been completed”, Tahir said.
