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LAHORE:
Promoting green energy is a priority for governments around the world, but the problems faced by solar energy consumers in Pakistan continue to grow. Initially, the government launched a campaign to promote solar energy by encouraging net metering connections.
Net metering connections allow electricity consumers to generate their own power (usually through rooftop solar systems) and supply excess electricity to the national grid.
When hundreds of thousands of consumers installed net metering systems and the number of units generated by solar energy users and injected into the national grid began to increase, the government began to introduce changes to the net metering policy.
On December 16, 2025, the Power Planning and Monitoring Company (PPMC), through letter No PPMC/CFRA/2025/108, directed the DISCOs that net metering consumers producing electricity beyond their approved load should not be billed for these excess units.
In other words, consumers with a difference between their Distribution Generation Capacity (DGC) and their Maximum Demand Indicator (MDI) should not be billed for additional units.
The DGC refers to the approved capacity of electricity that a consumer can generate and inject into the distribution network through solar panels. The MDI is the largest amount of electricity demand that a consumer draws from the grid at any time.
According to sources, after issuing the December 16 letter, the PPMC called a meeting of DISCO representatives to clarify the policy guidelines, emphasizing that only surplus units would not be billed.
However, instead of simply refraining from billing for excess generation, the DISCOs allegedly stopped billing for exported units altogether. The exported units are the surplus electricity produced by the consumer through solar panels and supplied to the grid.
As a result, DISCOs effectively made millions of exported solar units disappear, and the electricity generated by millions of net metering consumers was not included in their bills.
Instead of adjusting the units exported, consumers were charged for all the electricity they consumed.
Failure to account for exported units led to high electricity bills for solar energy consumers during the winter season. The arrival of unusually high bills in cold weather sparked widespread outrage among solar energy users.
As the situation worsened, the PPMC again issued a clarification letter to the DISCOs on January 22, stating that billing should be done for generation approved by the consumer, while generation beyond the approved limit should not be billed.
However, by then, DISCOs had already caused losses to solar energy consumers worth millions of units.
Sources said the DISCOs misused the new net metering policy to hide line losses. Units generated by net metering consumers and supplied to the national grid were used within the system but were not reflected in billing, allowing DISCOs to hide losses.
