Pakistan solar power capacity climbs past 51 gigawatts
Pakistan solar power capacity, the electricity all of the country solar panels could produce at once, reached an estimated 51 gigawatts of distributed and rooftop systems as of March 2026, Renewables First states, as reported by pv magazine. A gigawatt equals 1 billion watts. Distributed and rooftop means panels on homes, farms and businesses that feed power straight to the site that owns them, not through the shared grid first. The estimate rests on 54 gigawatts of cumulative panel imports through March 2026, since Pakistan keeps no registry of every small system.
Rising bills and falling panel prices are driving it
The surge follows a squeeze from both directions. Electricity tariffs, the price charged per unit of grid power, rose 155% in 3 years as subsidies were withdrawn, the World Resources Institute reports, while global panel prices fell by nearly 50% on Chinese manufacturing overcapacity. Net metering, the deal that lets a solar owner sell surplus power back to the grid for credit, grew from 57% of consumers in 2020 to 89% in 2024. Homes drove the largest single share, residential systems making up 44% of installed capacity in June 2025.
The 4 sector figures sum to the 38 gigawatt total distributed solar capacity Renewables First and Ember state for June 2025.
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| Residential | 16.9 |
| Industrial | 10 |
| Agricultural | 8.1 |
| Commercial | 3.3 |
Solar now meets Pakistan entire growth in electricity demand
Renewables First and Ember own joint analysis states total electricity demand rose 21%, about 33 terawatt hours, in the 2 years to fiscal year 2025, while the economy grew only 5.2%. Distributed solar alone met the entire increase, its own generation rising from about 15 to 51 terawatt hours and taking its share of total generation from about 10% to 28%. Capacity rose fast too. Renewables First own March 2026 estimate of 51 gigawatts sits 13 gigawatts above its June 2025 estimate of 38 gigawatts, a rise this article calculates across those 9 months. Dave Jones, Chief Analyst at Ember, said, "Pakistan has a thirst for energy, and solar is providing it."
Solar power beats grid electricity and diesel on cost
Renewables First states solar with battery storage costs roughly 20 rupees per kilowatt hour, against 41 rupees for grid electricity and 120 rupees for diesel. That gap is pulling in farms too. Solar powered tube wells, wells that pump irrigation water, rose from 0% of the total in 2022 to 61% by 2025, while diesel powered ones fell from 79% to 28%, avoiding about 1,900,000,000 litres of diesel a year. Nabiya Imran, Associate for Energy Insights at Renewables First, said, "Empowered by the widespread adoption of solar PV tech, consumers are playing a central role in Pakistan's electrification and energy transition."
Figures are Renewables First own per unit cost estimates for each power source.
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| Solar with battery | 20 |
| Grid electricity | 41 |
| Diesel | 120 |
Idle power plants and shrinking utility revenue
The growth creates a paradox for Pakistan utilities, the World Resources Institute states. Under the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, Pakistan built 46 gigawatts of gas, coal and oil fired plant capacity that utilities still pay for under fixed contracts even as paying customers leave for their own rooftops, on top of 20% of power lost in transmission before it reaches anyone. Renewables First states Pakistan has avoided more than 12,000,000,000 dollars in oil and gas import spending since 2018 through February 2026, with 6,300,000,000 dollars more possible by the end of 2026, savings arriving as revenue falls for utilities still serving everyone who has not gone solar.