Dawn reported on 21 July 2025 that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had, for the third time, stopped the Power Division from pursuing a revision of net-metering terms before a formal summary reached his office. The shelved plan would have cut the buyback rate for exported units from about Rs27 to about Rs11.3 per unit, a cut of 58 per cent on our arithmetic. Officials cited in the report put net-metered connections at around 325,000 with about 6,500 MW of capacity.
The numbers do not agree
The official statistics tell a smaller story. The Pakistan Economic Survey 2023-24 counted 117,807 net-metered installations with 1,822 MW as of March 2024. The 2024-25 survey reported 2,813 MW of net metering as of March 2025, enough to account for the rise in total installed capacity that year. That is growth of 991 MW, or 54 per cent, in twelve months.
The 6,500 MW figure is 2.3 times the March 2025 official total (6,500 divided by 2,813). Some of the gap may be new connections since March, and some may be capacity approved but not yet connected. Some may simply be wrong. The officials' implied average system size, about 20 kW per connection, is also larger than the roughly 15.5 kW implied by the 2024 survey. A policy argument that rests on capacity figures this far apart needs a reconciled number before it needs a new rate. The DISCOs hold the connection records, and publishing them by company each month would settle the question.
Why the Power Division keeps trying
The case for change has not gone away. Power Minister Awais Leghari has argued that net metering gives some users unjustified returns and adds to surplus-capacity costs, while promising that existing users would not be penalised. Officials also told Dawn that hybrid systems that do not export at all are the bigger threat to grid demand. They are probably right, and a lower buyback rate would make hybrids more attractive.
The method has been the problem. According to the report, the Power Division engaged the Ministry of Information to build public support against net metering. Treating consumers as an audience for a campaign, instead of as parties to a regulatory change, is why each attempt has ended at the Prime Minister's office.
Our view
Net-metering terms are NEPRA regulations, and that is where this should be settled: a published draft, an estimate of the cost shift onto non-solar consumers, a hearing, and grandfathering for existing agreements until they expire. A buyback rate linked to the cost of energy the system avoids, which is mostly midday fuel, is defensible. A political pause every few months is not, because each one triggers a rush of applications ahead of the next rumoured cutoff.
Non-solar consumers have no one speaking for them in this argument. They keep paying capacity costs as sales to solar households fall.