Researchers from Pakistan and the United Kingdom have found that Pakistan’s solar boom is running through two separate channels. Registered net metering is concentrated among higher-income customers in the best-served utility areas. Unregistered off-grid and behind-the-meter systems dominate where the grid is least reliable.

The study was conducted by Wajid Islam of the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, Jan Rosenow of the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge, and Asha Amirali of the University of Bath. The researchers combined Ember generation data with the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority’s (NEPRA) performance evaluation of distribution companies for fiscal 2024-25, NEPRA’s State of Industry Report 2025, and module import data from Renewables First. They said the four sources had not previously been combined at the distribution-company level.

Pakistan had 6.1 GW of net-metering capacity across 378,339 consumers by June 30, 2025. About 85% is concentrated in six distribution companies: Lahore Electric Supply Co. (LESCO) with 1.3 GW, Islamabad Electric Supply Co. (IESCO) and K-Electric with 0.9 GW each, Multan’s MEPCO with 0.8 GW, Faisalabad’s FESCO with 0.7 GW and Gujranwala’s GEPCO with 0.6 GW. Five of the six report near-zero load shedding and bill recovery above 100%. The exception is Karachi’s K-Electric, which reported 5.2 hours of load shedding a day.

The researchers said solar adoption in these areas is driven primarily by electricity prices rather than outages. 84/kWh. A rooftop system displacing the most expensive units can pay for itself in two to four years, according to the paper.

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