By Bakhtawar Tauseef
Pakistan’s solar market is booming — but not for everyone. Businesses are surging ahead, unaffected by the policy shift that made solar harder for households. Working families, priced out and left behind, are still waiting.
ISLAMABAD — Every month, Awais waits. He waits for the electricity bill to arrive, checks the number, and starts calculating. In summer, when the air conditioner runs and the water motor labors through the heat, the bill climbs to 15,000 rupees. It does not arrive as a surprise. It arrives as a confirmation of something he already knows that energy in Pakistan today costs more than many households can comfortably pay.
Awais works at a private company in Sahiwal. He has done his homework on what a rooftop solar system costs, roughly what it saves, and how long it takes to recover the investment. A modest residential system runs between 700,000 and 900,000 rupees where the math works but the money does not.
“The biggest hurdle is the very high initial cost,” he says. “The investment takes a long time to recover.”
Not far away, in the factories and commercial strips, businesses have been moving in the opposite direction. Electricity costs that once consumed up to 40% of total operating expenses have been cut to near zero through solar. Pakistan now ranks among the top solar markets globally, with at least 40 gigawatts of installed capacity and a market growing at 10 to 15% annually. The numbers point upward. But the surge is not reaching everyone.
The Industrial Surge
Muhammad Ali Qasim founded Fivo Energy in Lahore in 2018 and has been watching the market evolve ever since. He describes 2023 as the turning point.
“Something happened in 2023 where businessmen understood that they should shift to solar,” he says. “When they shifted, their competitors who maybe didn’t have knowledge about solar were forced to follow, because the early adopters were offering prices that the others couldn’t match.”
Once one business in a sector made the move, the pressure on rivals became a matter of commercial survival. Solar adoption in industry became self-reinforcing.
“Almost 30 to 35% of industry has already transitioned, and the rest are shifting rapidly,” Qasim says. “Our own figures show our residential client base has decreased this year, while our industrial and commercial clients have suddenly increased a lot.”
What has kept the industrial surge moving is a simple fact about how factories operate. They run during daylight hours, consuming what their panels generate on-site in real time, with little surplus to sell back to the grid. The policy change in February 2026 that disrupted the residential calculation left commercial adopters almost entirely untouched.
The Affordability Gap
For the working family, the first and most persistent problem is upfront cost.
“People who are installing solar are generally well-off,” Qasim says. “I have seen customers who simply can’t afford it.”
A standard 10-kilowatt residential system costs around 900,000 rupees today, roughly half what it cost three years ago. The reduction is real. But for a household managing monthly bills of 10,000 to 15,000 rupees, spending close to a million rupees in a single sum requires capital that most working families do not have.
Shahab Qureshi, chief executive of Shaheen Electronics and Solar and president of the Solar Panel Association on Hall Road in Lahore, describes what it has taken for families who did manage to make the switch.
“Families have sold gold or taken out loans,” he says. “Solar energy is no longer a luxury for the wealthy but a necessity for the middle class to escape high electricity bills.”
Faizan, a middle-class resident of an apartment building in Karachi, has looked at the numbers and found them unworkable. “Investing 1.2 to 1.5 million PKR as a one-time cost is almost impossible for the middle class,” he says. “If this cost is brought down, then one can consider it.”
Left Behind by Location
Affordability is not the only reason families are missing out on solar. Geography plays an equal role. In Lahore and across Punjab, where homes are largely single or double-storey, adoption has moved quickly. Karachi presents a different picture.
“In Lahore, there isn’t a vertical living concept; it’s horizontal. So, excessive space is available on roofs,” Qasim explains. “But in Karachi, where vertical living exists, solar adoption is hindered by a space constraint. It’s not a money constraint.”
Faizan faces exactly this double bind.
“I live in an apartment building where suitable space is not available, and the administration does not allow it,” he says. “I consulted one or two service providers about this, but they could not provide a suitable solution.”
In rural Qila Didar Singh, Usman has not installed solar, not from lack of resources or interest, but because he lives in a joint family home and will not make a long-term investment in a property he does not own.
“The reason for not installing it yet is simply that I haven’t built a separate home for myself,” Usman says.
While he waits, the grid bills him twice. First bill for electricity, and again when voltage fluctuations burn out motors and wiring mid-season. His own relatives converted their irrigation motors to solar a year ago. The answer is right in front of him. He just does not own the roof to put it on.
The Policy That Widened the Gap
February 2026 brought an unwelcome shift. The government introduced net billing for all new solar customers, cutting the buyback rate for surplus electricity from roughly 27 rupees per unit to 10 to 12 rupees. Night-time electricity from the grid is still charged at standard rates. A zero bill is no longer reachable through panels alone.
“Reaching a zero bill isn’t that easy anymore,” Qasim says. “The pace of adoption has definitely slowed. People are in a wait and watch phase.”
Individual solar owners are now expected to sell surplus electricity at rates far below what the government pays large Independent Power Producers, without any of the protections those producers enjoy.
Batteries are the industry’s answer. Store surplus during the day, use it at night.
“If battery prices drop by 20 to 30%, people will forget the grid,” Qasim says. “Massive adoption is expected. It will be massive.”
But they add considerably to an installation cost that was already out of reach for most working families, pushing the solution further away from the people who need it most.
No Relief in Sight
Back in Sahiwal, Awais holds the plan in mind the way you hold something you are waiting for the right moment to act on.
“Installing solar could virtually eliminate the electricity bill,” Awais says. “It would bring mental peace. Once my financial circumstances allow, I will definitely have it installed.”
While in Karachi, Faizan faces two hurdles at once: no rooftop to install on, and no budget to match even if he had one. The revolution has not yet found a way to reach him.
Pakistan’s solar revolution is real. The momentum is there. What is still missing is a path that brings it to the households that need it most but cannot yet reach it.
