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NEPRA has officially killed one‑to‑one net metering, replacing it with a net billing system that will make rooftop solar far less lucrative for export-heavy users.
Under the new Prosumer Regulations 2026, consumers will pay the full retail tariff on every unit they draw from the grid, while their exported solar units will only be bought at the National Average Energy Purchase Price – a much lower, wholesale-based rate.
Bills will now be calculated separately: imported units charged at normal slabbed tariffs, exported units credited at NAEPP, with any surplus credit carried to the next month or settled quarterly instead of wiping out the bill unit-for-unit.
NEPRA has repealed the 2015 Net Metering Regulations; existing contracts will run their course on older terms, but their billing method is being shifted to this new net billing formula, and any renewals will fall fully under the NAEPP-based regime.
In the old 2015 net metering regime, prosumers could offset exported units one‑for‑one against imported consumption at the applicable retail tariff, with any surplus carried forward or paid out, effectively using the grid as a free battery at near full consumer rates. Over time, policymakers chipped away at this by first tying payouts to the National Average Power Purchase Price (NAPP), and later even floating reductions toward roughly Rs 10 per unit, but the fundamental mechanism still revolved around kWh offsets.
The 2026 rules formally repeal those net metering regulations and flip the logic: imported units are billed at full slabs, surcharges and taxes, while exported units are treated as a separate commodity sale at NAEPP, with any excess credit carried forward or settled quarterly rather than wiping out the bill. Existing net metering contracts will see out their terms on older NAPP-linked payouts, but renewals will move fully onto the NAEPP-based net billing regime, sharply curbing the incentive to oversize solar systems purely for selling back to the grid.
