By Adaobi Rhema Oguejiofor
The Nigerian Electricity Management Services Agency (NEMSA) has assured electricity consumers using prepaid meters that their already purchased units will not be lost as a result of the ongoing meter upgrade.
The Managing Director (MD) of NEMSA, Mr Tukur Tahir, said this in a statement issued by the Agency’s head of communication and Protocol Unit, Ama Umoren, on Sunday.
Tahir, who made the statement in response to enquiries from electricity consumers over the ongoing discussion on Standard Transfer Specification (STS) of prepaid meters upgrading using Token Identifier (TID) rollover, set to commence soon, assured customers that they have nothing to fear as the meter upgrade process would not affect the credit unit balance on their meters.
He said that the credit balance would remain intact after the upgrade, adding that the meter upgrade was a one-time process.
In his own words, “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, 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 rollover bit set, which will be provided by the utility companies when the key change tokens are credited.”