Buying prepaid electricity online takes thirty seconds and tells you almost nothing. You get a rand amount, a 20-digit token and, if you look closely, a units figure buried in the confirmation. This page explains what is in that message, how to read the units, and how to keep a record of what each purchase really cost per kilowatt-hour.
Most South African households buy electricity online through their bank's app or internet banking, or through an online vendor, rather than from their supplier's own website. Whether Eskom sells to you directly online depends on whether Eskom or your municipality supplies your meter, so confirm that with your supplier. The mechanics afterwards are identical either way: the vendor issues a token, the token is tied to your meter, and the units only exist once you key it in.
ElecTracker does not sell electricity and is not affiliated with Eskom or any bank. Buy wherever you normally do. This tool reads the confirmation afterwards.
This is the most common question we see, and the answer is that the units are already in the message, abbreviated. A Standard Bank prepaid electricity confirmation looks like this:
Reading it left to right: Amt is what you paid, U is the units in kilowatt-hours, the five blocks of digits are the token you key into the meter, and Charges is the service fee that bought no electricity. So R250.00 bought 63.40 kWh, and the real rate is the R250.00 less the R1.97 charge, divided by 63.40.
Paste that message into ElecTracker and it does the arithmetic, files the purchase by date and meter, and adds it to the chart. Do it for a few months and the cost-per-kWh line tells you whether your rate is climbing.
Every bank formats it differently, which is why reading them by eye gets tiring. ElecTracker recognises confirmations from FNB, Standard Bank, Absa, Nedbank, Capitec, Bank Zero and Investec, plus municipal prepaid vouchers, till receipts and online purchase confirmations from retailers. It also reads a pasted list of statement lines when you want to backfill history in one go.
Absa's message carries no units at all. In that case the purchase is still recorded for spend, and the rate column stays blank rather than showing a made-up number.
It is free, and your history is stored against your account so it is on every device you sign in from.
Your token and meter numbers are safe to paste. Tokens are cryptographically tied to one specific meter and cannot be used on another. Strip them out first if you would rather.