PowerMeter

What PowerMeter does.

South African prepaid electricity is opaque by design. PowerMeter logs your token purchases, reads your meter from a photo or from you reading the digits out loud, and turns the result into cost per kWh, usage trends and a monthly forecast in rands, including VAT. Voice runs on the phone itself, so no audio leaves the device.

Prepaid electricity in South Africa gives you a number of units and almost no context. The tariff changes, the block you are billed in changes, and the only record most people keep is a pile of till slips.

PowerMeter keeps the record for you. Log a token purchase and it works out what you actually paid per kWh. Point the camera at the meter and it reads the digits rather than making you type them, or simply read them out: speech is recognised on the device, with no network fallback, so the audio never leaves the phone. Over a few weeks that becomes a usage history, a cost trend, and a forecast of where the month is heading.

It does not claim to predict municipal tariff changes, and it does not promise savings. It shows you what you have spent and what you are using, which is the part nobody else shows you.