BYahayay  Umar 

Amid billing controversies, NERC approves 22 firms for meter procurement, Conlog, the manufacturer of the prepaid meters used by Ikeja and Kaduna Electric companies, has warned that the meters will cease to operate from November 2024.

In a statement seen on Conlog’s website on Monday, the meters must be upgraded before November 24, 2024, as the TID Identifier for the current meters in use will be phased out.

The manufacturer, based in South Africa, said the current meters’ TID Identifier has a reference base date of 1993, which would be replaced with a new base date of 2014.

Conlog revealed that users of the TID Identifier 1993 base date will have to upgrade or reset their prepaid meters to the 2014 base date.

The upgrade is termed ‘TID Rollover Event” and will affect all users of Conlog prepaid meters in Nigeria and its other markets in Africa, the Middle East and South America.

Explaining the circumstances, Conlog said: “What is TID? Each credit token has a unique TID IDENTIFIER (TID) encoded into the 20 digits to prevent token replay at the meter.

“The TID is referenced to a base date of 1993 and will run out of range in 2024 (KNOWN AS THE TID ROLLOVER EVENT), thus causing the payment meter to stop accepting new tokens.”

According to the company, “The technical remedy is to “RESET” each meter to reference a new base date of 2014 by means of entering two special tokens before 24 November 2024.”

Already, the Kaduna Electric Head, Non MD Metering, Umar Gumel, has broadcasted a video informing its users of the need to upgrade their prepaid meters before next year in November.

Gumel said customers of Kaduna Electric should start making their way to the company’s offices by August 1, 2023, to upgrade their meters to avoid rendering them useless.