I suppose you could make a case for the (proper) dedicated plug, although still a bit of a stretch on the "critical [...] data processing equipment".

From the regs, the exception is "socket-outlet that complies with SANS 164-4 and that is intended only fort he connection of an appliance for critical application (such as emergency lighting, a deep-freeze, a burglar alarm, data processing equipment, or life-supporting equipment)".

At the end of the day, when a child sticks that little prepaid supply cord in his mouth (you know, after having done the same with a 9V battery), will your short-cut hold up in court?

2 hours ago, Volta said:

I suppose you could make a case for the (proper) dedicated plug, although still a bit of a stretch on the "critical [...] data processing equipment".

From the regs, the exception is "socket-outlet that complies with SANS 164-4 and that is intended only fort he connection of an appliance for critical application (such as emergency lighting, a deep-freeze, a burglar alarm, data processing equipment, or life-supporting equipment)".

At the end of the day, when a child sticks that little prepaid supply cord in his mouth (you know, after having done the same with a 9V battery), will your short-cut hold up in court?

Perhaps a case that power is life supporting. Oxygen or sleep machine? 

Mine is also behind my inverter, I can only recharge when I am pulling power from the grid but it does work. I just set my minimum power from the grid a bit higher when I want to recharge

Works most of the time so couldn't be bothered to get a non-earth leakage protected plug installed as I am sure it is on contravention of some safety regulations and putting in a separate EL for it doesn't make sense. 

Would like to know how long it takes for CIU to kick in once you have change over from solar to grid. I tried and waited for a 20 mins and the CIU didn't connect. 

11 hours ago, Olies said:

Would like to know how long it takes for CIU to kick in once you have change over from solar to grid. I tried and waited for a 20 mins and the CIU didn't connect. 

Just install it in front of the inverter and be done. I had way too many intermittent connection when it was situated behind the inverter.

Please may anyone be able to help me. I have just had a Sunsynk inverter installed, and now my prepaid meter is not displaying the correct kWh. For instance, the meter was stuck on 80kWh for a week, and I checked the inverter battery, which had gone from 99% the previous night to 36% the morning I checked it. The inverter also displayed that it was not pulling eskom power, it turns out that my prepaid electricity had run down to 0kWh without me knowing, and I had to load more credits to the meter in order to charge up the batteries again. The problem is that the prepaid meter isn't displaying that the kWh are depleting therefore this will continue to happen. Is there anyway to rectify this? TIA

Thanks to everybody that responded to my thread on the Prepaid meter that could not load electricity as it was installed on the essential circuit side - and not the incoming side from Council / Escom. As per suggestions on this forum - I had the installer come back and moved one of the plugs in the kitchen to the Escom / Council / incoming side and connected the prepaid meter to that - it now works perfectly.

On 2023/06/28 at 3:53 PM, Jonathan85 said:

Please may anyone be able to help me. I have just had a Sunsynk inverter installed, and now my prepaid meter is not displaying the correct kWh. For instance, the meter was stuck on 80kWh for a week, and I checked the inverter battery, which had gone from 99% the previous night to 36% the morning I checked it. The inverter also displayed that it was not pulling eskom power, it turns out that my prepaid electricity had run down to 0kWh without me knowing, and I had to load more credits to the meter in order to charge up the batteries again. The problem is that the prepaid meter isn't displaying that the kWh are depleting therefore this will continue to happen. Is there anyway to rectify this? TIA

Although a very old question the solution is as @vanwyk.za just mentioned. The clue here if the meter is on essential is that the unit don't get updated as one is using grid. This means one will also not be able to load units bought. 

I have converted to solar for my house. So to avoid the monthly fees amounting to around R400, I applied to swop my eskom meter for a prepaid meter to use as a back up. It cost me just over R10000.00 for the prepaid meter.  It has finally been installed and now I am having endless problems to get this system to work. I'm wondering if anyone else has gone this route. I live in Dullstroom. Mpumalanga. Thank you.

On 2024/04/24 at 2:29 PM, Eve Gunns said:

I have converted to solar for my house. So to avoid the monthly fees amounting to around R400, I applied to swop my eskom meter for a prepaid meter to use as a back up. It cost me just over R10000.00 for the prepaid meter.  It has finally been installed and now I am having endless problems to get this system to work. I'm wondering if anyone else has gone this route. I live in Dullstroom. Mpumalanga. Thank you.

What make and model inverter do you have? 

This is a very high cost to convert to prepaid🤔

On 2024/04/24 at 2:29 PM, Eve Gunns said:

I have converted to solar for my house. So to avoid the monthly fees amounting to around R400, I applied to swop my eskom meter for a prepaid meter to use as a back up. It cost me just over R10000.00 for the prepaid meter.  It has finally been installed and now I am having endless problems to get this system to work. I'm wondering if anyone else has gone this route. I live in Dullstroom. Mpumalanga. Thank you.

Usually you have the actual meter, and a small unit that displays some information and has a keypad for entering the vouchers that you buy. The latter is usually referred to as a CIU (Customer Interface Unit).

In most, but not all, cases, the CIU communicates with the actual meter via the wiring in the house. And this all works as long as there is nothing but cable between the CIU and the meter. If your CIU is plugged into a socket that is backed up, then this is no longer the case. The CIU is plugged into a socket which has cables which are connected to all the circuitry inside the inverter. Now you don't have that simple, direct connection to the meter any more.

I used to have to go outside to the garage to use my current CIU. The garage is not backed up, and those wires still have an unbroken path to the meter. I got an electrician to add one plug socket that is inside the house but not backed up (IE bypasses the inverter an all it's circuitry).

So as a first test, I would plug the CIU into a socket that is not backed up and see if the behaviour changes.

We have a Sunsynk Inverter, turn the inverter off when you load tokens on the prepaid box, turn it on after it will show the first amount then change to the added amount loaded.   

Hi all. Last year I installed solar, with inverter and battery.

I have installed a Solis inverter as well as a separate plug point for the meter to be directly connected to Eskom. Ie non essentials.

Since this was done I have been unable to load units to the prepaid meter.

I’ve had to bypass everything by connecting the prepaid meter box in my house directly to the main Eskom box outside my house to load units which is both dangerous and not correct. A City Power employee helped me do this. 

does anyone have any tips for me on what I can do. I have the Landis & Gyr meter and can post a pic if this helps 

Does it help to turn the inverter

off and leave it off for a while for the meter to re-establish connection 

I would bet that that dedicated plug point is not actually connected directly to the Ekom feed. You have shown that you can load units if the little user console IS directly connected to the grid.

This is a common problem with pre-paid. Most of them need to be connected to the actual meter. Circuit breakers and lengths of cable in your house don't cause problems with this, but even a trolley inverter causes problems.

A common problem in my neck of the woods is that somebody has pre-paid. They don't keep an eye on the balance and the meter runs out and shuts down. No problems, the unit that they use to load credit is backed up by a UPS. 

But the UPS breaks the direct connection between the meter and the console.

If your system is properly installed, you will have a switch that allows you to bypass the entire PV system and run everything from the grid. Using that might help.

Call back the electrician who installed that socket for you, and tell him that it's not properly done.  I had one of those done (and he did properly) and it does make things easier when it's time to feed the meter.

In my experience the console can usually run off batteries. So if you get caught in the dark, put some batteries in, plug it in to a non-backed up socket, and you should be able to reload.

Edited January 23, 20251 yr by Bobster.

I do not understand some of it. In my house there is no way to intervene between the grid and the meter. Its directly wired and sealed. Intervention on the cabling in front of the meter could be considered a criminal offense. Everything is on the output of the meter. If the grid is on I can reload credit any time. My inverters are off-grid, so no way for reverse feeding.

Shortly after commissioning my solar system the meter showed "Error". I reported it by phone to the municipality. Since the municipality was anyway in the process of replacing all old meters and the crew happened to be in the region they arrived within 10 minutes and replaced it with a brand new Landis&Gyr (Swiss brand manufactured in SA). The credit in the old meter was then sent to me by email in form of a token. No more problem ever with the meter.

Being new to the prepaid game I can just say I am happy with my wireless console back to the munic main unit out in the street. 

The only problem I see it does take a number of seconds to update credit thus no actual real time values as far as power use is concerned can be requested. Time will tell how long the console battery lasts but I guess it could be longer than a year. Maybe others in Tshwane can give an idea of the current Conlog unit. 

5 hours ago, Beat said:

I do not understand some of it. In my house there is no way to intervene between the grid and the meter. Its directly wired and sealed. Intervention on the cabling in front of the meter could be considered a criminal offense. Everything is on the output of the meter. If the grid is on I can reload credit any time. My inverters are off-grid, so no way for reverse feeding.

There is the actual meter which measures your consumption, and, for pre-paid users, there is usually a separate CIU (customer interface unit) that just displays the credit balance and gives you a warning when you're running low. I have seen some cases where the CIU "talks" to the meter via a wireless link, but in most cases it "talks" over the wiring in the house. As I said, an inverter will break that connection and you will not be able to reload.

You don't have to intervene between grid and meter. You just need a socket that doesn't have an inverter between it and the meter.

Different brands of units behave differently. One brand that is common around where I live loses all it's settings if there is no power to it. Which means that when you run out, you first have to register it with the actual meter again. That registration is usually done via the key pad, so try to make sure to get a manual. 

Yip as per @Bobster....the CIU should be plugged into a socket that is on the non-essential circuit...meaning that circuits power will flow from Municipal Meter > Main DB > Socket and vice versa.

Its works using a comms method called PLC - Power Line Communication.

So if the socket you plugged the CIU into has a flow of Municipal Meter > Main DB > Inverter > Socket, the CIU doesn't like a middle-man aka the Inverter. Therefore comms between the CIU and the Municipal Meter at street level is broken or can't be established.

I specifically asked for a non-essentials socket/plug point for the CIU, had no issues since solar installation.

5 hours ago, Bobster. said:

There is the actual meter which measures your consumption, and, for pre-paid users, there is usually a separate CIU (customer interface unit)

Thank you for your explanation! I have never seen or known about such thing. We learn every day.

 

5 hours ago, Bobster. said:

One brand that is common around where I live loses all it's settings if there is no power to it.

Great achievement of modern technology! So one has to reconfigure it after each load shedding!

8 hours ago, Beat said:

Great achievement of modern technology! So one has to reconfigure it after each load shedding!

Keeps you on your toes and unless you like the flashing 00:00 times on you rmicrowave etc. which now don't occur, since it presumably is sitting on your power backed up side, now you have the pre-paid customer units making up for this 🙂

12 hours ago, Beat said:

17 hours ago, Bobster. said:

One brand that is common around where I live loses all it's settings if there is no power to it.

Great achievement of modern technology! So one has to reconfigure it after each load shedding!

Hmm... that's a good question. It is not all brands. I've only ever heard of it being a problem when people run out of credit and now the meter has power but the CIU does not. There is some long code you must punch in, as per a facebook post.

Mine doesn't have this problem. I know this because during a recent rewiring they had to cut all feed to my house at one point. Meter just came back on and started working as usual.

All these things are band specific. Currently I have an African Meter Systems meter. This uses PLC between the CIU and the meter. Prior to that I had an Itron, which had a radio link. There are least three brands of prepaid meter in my street, and they all present different problems that require different solutions.

Have had the same problem for months.
Plug for the CIU is on the non-essential side.
Tried just cutting mains to the inverter (switch) while checking and loading units. Seems to have worked magnificently.

Although not related to this post just a comment on the non carrier type of meters. Some months ago I helped a neighbour on a CUI that does nor plug into a socket. The CUI showed 30kWh but the main meter was depleted and it was giving an audible alarm when I went to the street kiosk. It seemed like the CUI showed it's battery still good but at about 25%. Thus a good practise to change the battery when it is low. Also good to check that the CUI does indeed show lower credits on a regular basis. 

I suggested to load some units and as we walked to their house at night the lights sudden came on and all well again. 

Another point my Sonoffs used to show power going through it in either direction. Using a radio linked CUI on my prepaid it stopped showing any export after converting to prepaid. On this point I am not sure if the Sonoff was updated that this caused export to stop showing or if it was the prepaid power meter that was installed causing it. Even my other Sonoffs just being used as a switch would not allow power to be exported as earlier.