PAKISTAN is about to commit $58bn — or most of this amount — to add new, costlier power capacity it may not need. Nepra’s conditional approval of the Integrated System Plan for 2025-35 deserves closer scrutiny because the regulator’s own members have flagged the problem in their decision. All three recorded dissenting or advisory notes questioning project selection, planning assumptions, and the bypassing of the CCI. That alone should have paused the process. Instead, the plan was approved. Adding 26,045MW under a plan built on the old assumption that demand keeps climbing ignores what is actually happening on the ground. Pakistan already has far more generation capacity than it uses. Consumers are paying for that surplus through some of the region’s highest tariffs, while high power costs have made the country’s exports harder to sell abroad.

Rooftop solar has changed the sector’s fundamentals. Households, businesses and farmers are installing their own systems to escape grid electricity they can no longer afford. That shift is already cutting into national grid demand — a trend that will only accelerate as panels and batteries become cheaper. The plan’s 8,120MW net-metering estimate treats this as a fixed number in a market moving too fast. Nepra excluded $900m for battery storage pending a separate study to establish its need. This move might sound reasonable, but approving a plan with no real storage strategy, even as battery imports rise and consumers pair solar with storage to leave the grid further behind, is a mistake. Storage lets the grid soak up extra solar by day and release it at night, easing pressure on costly peak-hour plants. Without it, the solar shift hurts grid finances rather than helping them. As wealthier consumers generate their own power, utilities serve a shrinking base, spreading fixed costs — and higher bills — across fewer people. The outcome may benefit solar adopters but is a financial problem for an already overbuilt grid. ISMO has also reportedly disclaimed responsibility for the accuracy of the data behind the plan. Committing billions of dollars on projections the system operator will not stand behind is recklessness. The government should use the regulator’s own objections to reopen the plan, and build one around the grid that solar, batteries and shifting demand are already creating, not the one planners had imagined a decade ago.

Published in Dawn, September 15th, 2026