Solar boom adds stress to national electricity grid

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KARACHI: The growing number of Pakistanis is abandoning the national grid in favor of solar energy, accelerating the roof panel and endangering a government before billions of dollars in power sector debt.

This quiet energy change has gone beyond the rich suburbs, which is rooted in middle and low -income communities, where households get rid of electricity bills and frequent closures.

In a narrow street in Karachi, neighbors are fighting for a summer crowd in Farida Salem’s minor house.

“Solar makes life easier, but it’s a difficult choice for people like us.”

Saleem was cut off from the grid last year as he refused to pay his bill in protests to tolerate 18 hours of power cuts.

The mother of a widow and two disabled children, she bought her jewelry – a valuable possession for women – and borrowed from relatives so that two solar panels, a solar inverter and a battery to store energy, bought the battery for Rs 180,000.

Since the temperature goes through 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), the baby accumulates ducks under the door of Salem and the air of his fan.

Riding on the houses, solar panels have become a common look across the country of 240 million people, which has usually been recovered within two to five years.

According to the Global Energy Think Tank Amber, the formation of less than 2 % of energy mixes in 2020 reached 10.3 % in 2024 with solar energy.

But in a notable acceleration, in the first five months of 2025, it increased from twice to 24 %, which became the largest source of energy production for the first time.

It has mobilized the past gas, coal and nuclear power sources as well as hydropower, which has seen hundreds of millions of dollars in the past decades.

As a result, Pakistan has moved towards its target of unexpected renewable energy, which has become a mixture of 60 % of its energy by 2030.

Amber’s chief analyst, Dave Jones, told AFP that Pakistan was a “roof solar power leader”.

‘Great solar rush’

Globally increasing fuel costs, with demands to reduce government subsidy from the International Monetary Fund, once again, the administration has repeatedly increased power costs.

Prices have been fluctuated since 2022, but it has increased by 155 % and electricity bills are sometimes higher than the cost of rent.

“The Great Solar Rush is not the result of a government’s policy push,” Mohammad Basit Ghauri, a energy transfer specialist in the first renewable sources, told AFP.

“Residents have taken this decision with a clear disappointment over our classic power system, which is primarily based on many incompetence.”

Most of the solar equipment is derived from neighboring China, where prices have declined rapidly, which is widely driven by production and tech progress.

But the reduction in national grid consumers has called for a ready government with a burden of $ 8 billion in power sector loans, analysts say.

Pakistan’s dependence on expensive gas imports, which it sells to national energy providers.

It is also tied up in long contracts with independent power generators, including some of China’s ownership, for which it pays a fixed amount, regardless of the original demand.

An official report in March said that the rise in solar energy has “created anecdotal financial burden on grid consumers, which has helped high electricity revenue and damaging the stability of the energy sector”.

In June, electricity sales declined by 2.8 %, which declined for the second consecutive year.

Last month, the government imposed a new 10 % tax on all imported solar energy, while the Ministry of Energy has proposed to reduce the rate on which it buys more solar energy from consumers.

‘Disconnected from the public’

“The domestic solar boom was the answer to the crisis, not because of the” rise in the evening, “said Jones, Analyst Jones said.

National grid payers are losing users like businessman Arsalan Arif.

One -third of his income was spent on electricity bills in his Karachi house until he purchased a 10kW solar panel for about Rs 1.4 million.

He told AFP, “Before that, I didn’t follow any timetable. I was always affected by the power outage.”

Now it has “freedom and faith” to continue its catering business.

In the eastern city of Sialkot, Hamad Noor, who made safety clothing, changed solar power in 2023 and called it his “best business decision”, even broke in 18 months and now saved Rs 1 million every month.

Under the new government tax, the cost of changing the second factory of Noor has increased by about Rs 1.5 million.

“The tax imposed is unfair and benefits big businesses on small businesses,” he said.

“Policy makers are fully disconnected from the public and the business community.”