THE rushed Nepra decision to change the contract terms for both existing and future net-metered prosumers is clearly aimed at protecting the state’s costly but inefficient grid by limiting solar adoption. The move risks exacerbating the power sector’s deep-seated structural flaws. The shift from a net-metering framework to a net-billing regime without weighing in the concerns raised by most independent stakeholders at a recent public hearing indicates the government’s view that rapid private solar adoption is eroding distribution companies’ revenues and transferring its financial costs to consumers who are totally grid-dependent. Essentially, the regulator has altered how rooftop solar users are paid for the electricity they send to the grid. Even if they export to the grid the same number of units they later import, they will still pay a bill because the grid buys their electricity cheaply but sells it back at a much higher price. This reduces the financial savings for prosumers from rooftop solar, which will likely push them towards greater self-consumption and behind-the-meter installations. This will accelerate grid defections, exacerbating grid underutilisation and making fixed-cost recovery harder.

While the prime minister has taken note of Nepra’s decision following an outcry, the changed regulations are, in fact, a part of an official narrative that labels solarisation a threat to the national grid. It propagates the idea that solarised consumers are a privileged class who are benefiting from the system without paying for it and, in the process, shifting the financial burden to the rest of the consumers. This is a simplistic view that is flawed because not every net-metered consumer belongs to the privileged class. The problem of declining electricity demand and increasing financial woes of the sector, which the new net-billing regulations aim to tackle, are systemic. These cannot be tackled by punishing one set of consumers or labelling them as a burden for other consumers. Solarised prosumers constitute only 1pc of the entire national electricity system. The structural flaws will not go away by punishing them. Seen in conjunction with the tax imposed on solar panel sales, these regulations are clearly an attempt to keep the growth of solar electricity in check and manage it through centralised control. This is neither the first step nor the last in this regard. More such steps are in the offing to stem the solar tide.

Published in Dawn, February 12th, 2026