Lesson 3: Commissioning (inspection and enabling) prepayment meters

In this section we assume that the meters have been installed and therefore no electrical intervention is required in any of the steps, methods or inspections described.

A visual inspection of the connections should be made – both for water and electricity meters, taking note of leaks and correct cable connections respectively. Please also note that the meter must be labelled – ensuring that the meter is in fact measuring the consumption for the intended unit/residence/load.

Commissioning the meter/CIU generally follows a similar process across meter types.

• The simplest commissioning applies to integrated meters, as there is no separate CIU to pair. The only commissioning required is to check if the meter can accept a credit token and if the meter is able to switch the supply on and off. For the former a test token is loaded, which is supplied by the service provider, for the latter an engineering token, which is specific to each meter type is entered, which will usually switch the valve or contactor off for a short period, generally a few seconds and then automatically return the contactor/valve state to normal operation
• Linking/pairing of CIU to meter: Not applicable for wired solutions; for PLC and RF split meters the process is similar for most meter types. A list of specific codes and methods is provided; the principle is simply to request the CIU to pair with a specific meter serial number by either simply entering the serial number on the keypad, or entering a code and then the meter serial number. To confirm that the correct meter has been paired, we can either request the serial number of the meter to be displayed (this requires the CIU to communicate with the meter – in most cases) and confirming that the meter is in fact the correct one. A more reliable method is to issue a switch ON/OFF command and confirming that the electricity/water to the specific residence is switched off. This method can also be used for integrated prepayment meters.
• Another important part of the commissioning process includes ensuring that all meters are set to KRN 2. The details of this requirement can be found here. In essence the STS algorithm running out of available token numbers; to fix/correct this situation, all meters must be set to KRN 2 by 24/11/2024. Should this situation not be addressed, all meters not set to KRN will not be able to accept credit tokens after the specific date. To change from KRN1 to KRN 2 the service provider will issue 2 20 digit numbers/token, which must be entered successfully using the keypad. Using the appropriate engineering code one can confirm which KRN the meter is set to.