51 TWh From Solar Energy On Rooftops, Farms And Behind-The-Meter Installations. 135 TWh From Utility-Scale Sources That Keep Declining. Pakistan Is Running Two Electricity Systems Simultaneously And Only One Is Growing.
According to Renewables First’s Pakistan Electricity Review 2026, Pakistan had deployed an estimated 51 GW of solar capacity as of March 2026, while solar module imports reached 54 GW by the end of that same month.
The number that sits behind that headline is even more striking. Distributed solar including net-metering, behind-the-meter, and off-grid systems generated 51 TWh in fiscal year 2025, pushing Pakistan’s total electricity generation to a record 186 TWh. That 51 TWh is equivalent to roughly 46 percent of grid-supplied electricity over the same period.
Nearly half the electricity the national grid supplies is now also being generated independently of it. Not by large power plants. By households, farms and businesses that decided the grid was too expensive, too unreliable or too slow and installed solar themselves.
Electricity generated by utility-scale sources reached 135 TWh in fiscal year 2025; a 2 percent year-on-year decline and the fourth consecutive drop from a peak of 154 TWh in fiscal year 2022. Four years of consecutive decline. The direction is not ambiguous.
Renewables First Associate Nabiya Imran, speaking at the webinar launching the report, explained that demand that was once entirely on the grid has migrated to behind-the-meter and net-metered distributed solar. She described two parallel systems currently operating in Pakistan: the centralised grid structured around unidirectional power flows and thermal dependence, and consumers investing in distributed solar driven by high electricity tariffs and cheaper solar panel costs.
That framing; two parallel systems is the most important thing this report says. Pakistan has not reformed its energy sector. It has not reduced its circular debt. It has not renegotiated its CPEC power contracts or rationalised its thermal fleet. What it has done is allow its citizens to build a second electricity system around the failing first one. That second system now generates 51 TWh a year and is growing rapidly. The first system peaked four years ago.
Grid sales; electricity purchased by consumers from the state-owned central utility network reached 111 TWh in FY25, a 1.7 percent increase year-on-year but below the FY22 peak. The report clarifies that this does not reflect falling electricity demand, but rather that a growing share of consumption is met through distributed solar, with underlying electricity use continuing to rise while bypassing the grid.
This distinction matters enormously. Pakistan’s electricity demand is growing. What is falling is the grid’s share of meeting it. Every rooftop solar installation is a household that partially or fully exits the billing relationship with WAPDA and the distribution companies. Multiply that across millions of homes and the revenue implications for the utility sector are severe, particularly given that Pakistan already has Rs. 1.84 trillion in power sector circular debt.
The report warns that distributed solar is eroding utility revenues faster than thermal capacity can be rationalized, moving the sector toward an inflection point without sufficient policy frameworks. It states that the inflection point will depend on how quickly planning and policy adapt to decentralised, bi-directional electricity flows, and that a shift from capacity expansion to system optimisation, including flexibility, storage and demand-side management will be critical to improving efficiency and reducing costs.
Sohaib Malik, Senior Fellow at Renewables First, wrote in the report’s foreword that while policymakers are beginning to recognise the challenges facing the centralised model, most stakeholders do not yet fully appreciate the scale of the shift due to incomplete and imprecise datasets.
The incompleteness of the data is itself part of the problem. Pakistan has no comprehensive, real-time visibility into how much solar is installed behind-the-metre, how much electricity it generates or how that generation interacts with grid stability at the distribution level. The 51 GW figure is an estimate. The 51 TWh is derived from module import data and modelling. The actual numbers could be larger.
What is not in dispute is the trajectory. Pakistan imported 54 GW worth of solar modules by March 2026. Those modules are going somewhere. They are being installed on rooftops in Lahore, on farms in Punjab, in commercial buildings in Karachi and on off-grid systems in villages across Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Each installation is a small act of exit from a grid that has been too expensive for too long.
Imran noted that clean technologies such as solar, batteries and electric vehicles present an opportunity to localise manufacturing, supporting broader economic development. That opportunity is real. Pakistan is already one of the largest solar module import markets in Asia. The gap between importing panels and manufacturing them is a policy gap, not a capability gap.
Pakistan did not plan its way to 51 GW of solar. Its citizens and businesses did it themselves, one installation at a time, in response to electricity bills that became impossible to pay. The government now inherits both the opportunity and the challenge that creates: a distributed energy system that works, and a centralised grid whose revenue base is quietly being dismantled from below.
To check out our previous coverage on Pakistan’s energy sector and circular debt, read our articles here.
