The government has ended free solar licensing, making formal regulatory approval compulsory for all new solar installations, regardless of system size, under amendments to the NEPRA Act.
The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) confirmed every new consumer or prosumer must now obtain formal concurrence from the Authority before installing solar.
Applicants are required to pay a processing fee of Rs1,000 per kilowatt at the time of submission, a charge that now applies uniformly across all consumer categories without exception.
What changed from previous rules
Previously, only consumers installing distributed generation systems above 25 kilowatts were required to obtain a licence or concurrence from NEPRA and pay the associated processing fee.
Consumers installing systems up to 25 kilowatts were exempt from direct NEPRA licensing and only needed approval from their local power distribution companies, known as DISCOs.
NEPRA stated the framework has been revised under provisions of the NEPRA Act, making Authority concurrence mandatory for all system sizes without any threshold-based exemption remaining.
Earlier, the Power Division spokesman clarified that his division had not proposed this change and had not recommended placing any additional financial burden on consumers through new fees.
Buyback rates sharply reduced
The government has also significantly cut the rate at which solar consumers can sell surplus electricity back to the national grid, fundamentally altering the financial returns of rooftop solar.
Under the previous net-metering regime, consumers could sell excess power at approximately Rs25 to Rs27 per unit, with some cases recording a buyback rate of around Rs25.9 per unit.
Under the current net billing policy, the buyback rate for new consumers has been reduced sharply to between Rs8.13 and Rs11 per unit, representing a drop of nearly 60 to 70 percent.
Growing gap between export and import rates
Consumers still purchase electricity from the grid at slab-based tariffs typically ranging from Rs37 to Rs55 per unit or higher, depending on usage levels and consumer category classification.
This widening gap between low export compensation and high import tariffs has significantly reduced financial returns for solar users and has increased their reliance on direct self-consumption.
The combined effect of mandatory licensing fees and reduced buyback rates has increased the overall financial burden on solar consumers across all segments of Pakistan’s residential and commercial sectors.
The new regulatory framework removes the earlier distinction between small and large solar installations, bringing all systems under a single centralised mechanism managed directly by the Authority.
