THE solar boom has taken over Pakistan like a storm. A mere glance is enough to reveal that nearly all rooftops are being slowly covered with solar panels, irres-pective of whether they are houses, factories, hospitals, government buildings or stadiums.

This is not confined to large cities alone. Even the countryside is adopting this energy source for lighting houses and running tube wells, etc.

As such, the dependence on fuel as well as water energy will slowly decrease, and grid power will only be required during night and to run heavy industrial units till the commercial solar also takes over.

In essence, it is the government that propagated the use of solar energy to deal with the rising prices of grid elect- ricity that has gone out of the reach of most consumers, but soon the government will be confronted with another dilemma when the grid energy would drastically reduce, but the payment to independent power-producers (IPPs) would still have to be made as per their respective contracts.

One can only hope that the govern-ment is already aware of the issue, and that it is ready to face the consequences.

Malik ul Quddoos
Karachi

Published in Dawn, February 16th, 2025