Are you having the prepaid electricity meter not working issue? A lot of people encounter errors with their prepaid electricity meters at one point or the other. That can be frustrating. Imagine trying and failing to top up your meter. It can leave you in the dark. In this article, we are going to look at some of the reasons why your prepaid meter may have stopped working. We are also going to show you how you can get things up and running again.
Reasons why your prepaid meter may stop working
There are a couple of reasons why your prepaid meter may have stopped working. In South Africa, there are many popular prepaid meter brands. These include Hexing, Conlong, Landis+Gyr and Nyamezela. How you get your meter back up and running depends on the type of meter that you have in your home or in your office. The following are some of the most common prepaid electricity not working scenarios;
- You are failing to recharge. You keep getting a failed or Error message when trying to top up your meter.
- Your meter is not turning on. The screen remains blank.
You are unable to load your electricity token
This is probably the most common prepaid electricity meter not working issue that people encounter in South Africa and elsewhere around the globe. After buying your token, you are now unable to load it into the device.
You keep getting an error when you try to load the token into the prepaid meter. The result is that you remain in the dark. What could be the cause of this issue and what are the solutions?
What causes this issue?
Failure to load your electricity token mostly occurs when there is a communication breakdown between the meter and your power utility. What you may not be aware of is the fact that prepaid meters use electricity cables to communicate with the utility.
That’s the reason why even if you have a battery in the device, you will not be able to top it up without being connected to the grid. That’s only possible if you have a smart meter.
If you have allowed your electricity to be completely depleted, you may have issues toping up your meter. Again, the issue has to do with a failure to establish communication over the power lines.
How to resolve the issue
There are several solutions if you have been failing to top up your prepaid electricity meter. The first thing that you can try is to move the meter to another power socket. Perhaps the failure to communicate is only on a particular plug in your home.
This is something that we have noticed happening sometimes. Move your meter to another power point and see whether or not it manages to establish communication with the device.
Should this solution fail, one option is to take your electricity meter to your neighbor’s home and connect it to their power socket. This solution usually works. That’s because your neighbor’s line will be used to allow your meter to connect to the network.
Contact your power utility
Should the above solutions fail, and should you still be unable to top us your meter, you may need to get in touch with your utility to get help. In any case, you always need to have your utility’s contact details. Here is the Ekurhuleni prepaid meter contact number.
Your meter is not turning on
This tends to be another prepaid electricity meter not working issue that people encounter in South Africa. Your meter suddenly turns off. There is no light on the panel, and you are unable to do anything on the device. What can you do to resolve this issue?
First of all, you need to make sure that your prepaid electricity is getting power from your electricity terminal. If you have run out of electricity, you may need to go next door to see whether or not the device is working using their sockets.
If the device does not seem to be getting power, you may need to check the fuse in the plug. If that’s burnt out, get a new one.
Another thing that you need to do is to put the batteries into the device to see whether or not it will turn on. You won’t be able to recharge on non-smart meters using batteries, but you will be able to see whether or not your meter is working.
Finally, should everything else fail, it will be time to get in touch with a qualified technician or with your power utility to get help.
Summary
In this article, we explored the prepaid electricity meter not working issue. We noted that it’s common for people across South Africa to encounter this problem.
You are here either because you are failing to top up your meter, or because it’s not turning on. Those are the two main categories of problems that people encounter in this regard. This article gave you the solutions that should help you get up and running in no time.
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